Report on General Literature. 



87 



they witnessed ; but other writers, apart from the scene 

 of strife, discussed motives more than incidents, and to 

 the better satisfaction of their readers, spoke more about 

 the inner impulses and causes, which, acting upon the 

 popular mind of two great people, led to the conflict, rather 

 than about the conflict itself. It is to be expected, of 

 course, that when the whole contest shall have passed away 

 without danger of renewal, there will be some writers who, 

 after the manner of Alison, will gather up every fragment 

 of incident into abundant volumes; but the world will 

 accept these results rather as a necessary fund for reference, 

 than as material for patient reading. It will be felt that 

 he writes the truest history of the war, who, in a spirit of 

 philosophy, deals with the inner impulses that led to it, 

 rather than with the outward and visible matters of ag- 

 gravation; with the grand result, rather than with the 

 material steps that have led to that result ; with the softly 

 guiding words of statesmen, rather than with the rush of 

 mailed soldiery; with the ethnological -and philological 

 guidings of the past, rather than with their mere necessary 

 and unavoidable sequences of the present. 



The true writing of history must, indeed, for the future, 

 more and more be based upon this condition ; for the 

 world begins to move too rapidly to allow longer this calm 

 survey and study of transitory events ; many of which, 

 though attended by the utmost noise and turmoil, lead to 

 no real permanent or influential result. The old method 

 was all well enough in the days when an event like the 

 suppression of monasteries occupied a lifetime, or the im- 

 migration of a race required centuries. But in the later 

 times, when the one deed is determined in an hour, and 

 causes merely a passing item in a daily journal, and when, 

 with the aid of the united shipping of the world the 

 other event is accomplished in a year, a different study 

 of the earth's history is demanded. Let us look, for instance, 



