232 HISTORY. 



The demand now made for minuteness in these details 

 has a sort of parity with the requisitions of modern 

 science as regards chemical analysis. Still, what we 

 gain from this minute research is generally little more 

 than an amplified narrative of war, diplomacy, and 

 court or party intrigue ; witness the volumes of Mr. 

 Froude, on the reign of Elizabeth (now lying before 

 me), fed with papers from that great depot at Simancas 

 which has furnished so much towards the history of the 

 sixteenth century. Curiosity has of late been variously 

 pampered by documents drawn from secret and unex- 

 pected sources. There is a certain danger belonging to 

 these in the undue importance they often assume to the 

 historian who himself discovers and uses them. There 

 are few writers who can wholly resist this seduction. 



In some relations to these tendencies of the his- 

 torians of our day comes the fashion sometimes 

 justified, oftener not so of upsetting old opinions as 

 to persons and historical events. Two-thirds of the 

 early Eoman have been swept away by the merciless 

 criticism of Niebuhr, Lewes, and Mommsen, without 

 due regard to the fact that a simple town could not 

 have become the germ of an empire without some such 

 course of events as those which stand recorded to us. 

 A spirit of paradox has gone much farther as regards 

 the character of historical personages. The crimes of 

 Eoman emperors have had their apologists, and Eichard 

 III. and Henry VIII. have been held up as martyrs to 

 faulty interpretation of their acts. All history is open 

 to correction, but it ought to be sedulously guarded 

 against these paradoxes and personal partialities. 



