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evidence^, and assume that the truth can be discovered by an 

 occult faculty of historical divination. . . . The consequence 

 is, that ingenuity and labour can produce nothing but hypo- 

 thesis and conjectures^ which may be supported by analogies_, 

 and may sometimes appear specious and attractive^ but can 

 never rest on a solid foundation of proof. There will be, there- 

 fore, a series of conjectural histories. Each successive writer 

 will reject all or some of the guesses of his predecessor, and will 

 propose some new hypothesis of his own. . . . History will per- 

 petually revolve in the same hopeless circle." I think that the 

 general principles contained in this passage are not only appli- 

 cable to history, but may be usefully applied to a wide range of 

 philosophical, theological, and scientific speculation. 



II. If the only secure foundation of history is contemporaneous 

 testimony, or a something which may be taken as truly repre- 

 senting it, it becomes a most important question to determine, 

 for what number of years prior to the birth of a contemporaneous 

 historical literature can we be said to possess a trustworthy 

 historical tradition ? 



According to the opinion of Sir I. Newton, the transmission 

 of historical events by a trustworthy tradition extends only a 

 little beyond 100 years, anterior to the existence of contem- 

 poraneous documents. We may assume that the period of a 

 man^s trustworthy historical recollections extend from about ten 

 or twelve years of age to about eighty, if our faculties continue 

 entire. The cases of prolonged life beyond this period are so rare 

 that they may safely be left out of the calculation. It may be 

 urged that ten is too early an age for a trustworthy recollection 

 of historical events. It will be so, unless they are striking. 

 Speaking from my own experience, I have a most distinct recol- 

 lection of the chief events of the battle of Navarino, which took 

 place when I was eleven years of age. I am confident that I 

 have not read a description of the battle since, yet I could at 

 this moment describe its chief events from recollection. There 

 is one event which happened one or two years earlier, of which 

 my recollection is no' less vivid, and of some of the scenes of 

 which I could give an accurate description,- — the ravages of the 

 great November gale which inflicted a greater amount of mis- 

 chief on the west coast of England than any within the recol- 

 lection of the present generation. I can see many of its scenes 

 at this moment before my eyes, and think that I shall continue 

 to do so as long as I live. Among the earliest political events 

 of which- 1 have a distinct recollection are the sudden illness of 

 the Earl of Liverpool, which dissolved the ministry; the great 

 commercial panic of 1824 ; the death of the Emperor Alexander ; 

 and, earliest of all, the coronation of George IV. : but of these, 



