HISTORY. 231 



tombing a part of the community coming closely to 

 savage life in their ignorance, habits, and vices these 

 characters veiled over, but not extinguished by proxi- 

 mity to higher grades of cultivation. Which is the nation 

 so far advanced as not to furnish examples of these 

 strange contiguous diversities the inevitable result of 

 crowded population, and of that ' labour to live' which 

 is the necessary lot of so large a part of mankind ? The 

 Mob of every age and country a unity in itself tells 

 the tale of that vast substratum of human life of which 

 civilisation, when it exists at all, is but the surface 

 and the colouring. Take the approximate number of 

 1,000 millions as peopling the earth. Give to civilised 

 life its just definition and demarcation, and see how 

 small is the proportion of this mass of human existence 

 which can be brought under the title ! A numerical 

 estimate must needs be very vague in this case, yet we 

 can scarcely err in rating it at less than a fiftieth part 

 of the whole. All that lies outside this narrow limit 

 is little regarded by the ordinary historian, even where 

 materials exist for his use. 



Macaulay, in one of the first paragraphs of his great 

 work, strongly points out the baldness and imperfection 

 of history, thus confined to the affairs of courts and 

 camps. His third chapter well exemplifies what he 

 himself could do in correction of this common defi- 

 ciency. Gibbon held the same views ; but his History 

 embraced too long a time and too wide a space for its 

 fair application. The historians of our own day, fore- 

 stalled as to larger themes, work much upon detached 

 periods of time, and with greater profusion of details. 



