366 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
"good old times." The barrenness of the present was always 
apparent, that of the past was forgotten, and its incidents forced 
themselves into unreal prominence. Were traditions or legends 
based solely upon fact, knowing thus the process of their growth, 
it might be hoped by analysis to reduce their fiction to a minimum. 
Not only, however, did ancient man dress up his scraps of history 
in these fantastic garbs; he attired therein his poetical fancies; and 
the dreams of one age, hardening into a definiteness never intended, 
became the historical creeds of the next. 
The transition from tradition to record was simple, but took 
place in many ways. Written history might broadly be classified 
under three heads — the chronicling, the pictorial, and the philoso- 
phic. The first gave the bare facts; the second the facts in an 
agreeable dress ; the third superadded the consideration of motive 
and consequence. But it must be borne in mind that the historian 
could only introduce his readers to that which he saw himself. 
Moreover, when full allowance had been made for errors, there 
remained the fact that historians were of necessity fallible beyond 
almost every other class of writers. The lecturer had a great re- 
spect for the old chroniclers, and thought the absence of the critical 
faculty in them one of their greatest merits. They had preserved 
all that they came across for people who were better able to 
winnow the chaff from the wheat. 
As the critical, which in this sense was identical with the 
sceptical, spirit came in, chronicling in its representative character 
went out, though the race of Dryasdusts would never cease in 
the land. Shakspeare was England's first really good historical 
writer. In pictorial power he had never been equalled, and the 
bulk of the English people believed rather in his dramatic creations 
than in the actual historical personages whose names they bore. 
Now-a-days the historical novel supplied the place of the drama. 
Philosophical history was necessarily a plant of slow growth. 
Raleigh was the first English historian of this class. But, whether 
as pictorialists or philosophers, the English- writing historians of 
the present day were quite the best the world had ever seen. 
Unrecorded history lay hid where their fathers never thought 
of looking for it. Men now read history in the material vestiges 
of human existence which every race had left ; in habits and in 
customs; in physical and mental characteristics; scored indelibly 
in the solid earth ; vital in inherited forms, ceremonies, tastes, and 
