can trust, can adventure, can, in short, use all the means that insight and sympathy endow him with.

I see no other essential characteristics in the greatness of nations than there are in the greatness of individuals. Extraneous circumstances largely influence nations as individuals, and make a larger part of the show of the former than of the latter; as we are wont to consider no nation great that is not great in extent or resources, as well as in character. But of two nations, equal in other respects, the superiority must belong to the one which excels in courage and openness of mind and soul.

Again, in estimating the relative merits of different periods of the world, we must employ the same tests of greatness that we use to individuals. To compare, for instance, the present and the past. What astounds us most in the past is the wonderful intolerance and cruelty: a cruelty constantly turning upon the inventors; an intolerance provoking ruin to the thing it would foster. The most admirable precepts are thrown from time to time upon this caldron of human affairs, and oftentimes they only seem to make it blaze the higher. We find men devoting the best part of their intellects to the invariable annoyance and persecution of their fellows. You might think that the earth. brought forth with more abundant fruitfulness in the past than now, seeing that men found so much time for cruelty, but that you read of famines and privations which these latter days cannot equal. The recorded violent deaths amount to millions. And this is but a small part of the matter. Consider the modes of justice; the use of torture, for instance. What must have been the blinded state of the wise persons (wise for their day) who used torture? Did they ever think themselves, "What should we not say if we were subjected to this?" Many times. they must really have desired to get at the truth; and such was their mode of doing it. Now, at the risk of being thought a "laudator" of time present, I would say here is the element of greatness we have made progress in. We are more open in mind and soul. We have arrived (some of us at least) at the conclusion that men may honestly differ without offense. We have learned to pity each other more. There is a greatness in

modern toleration which our ancestors knew not.

Then comes the other element of greatness, courage. Have we made progress in that? This is a much more dubious question. The subjects of terror vary so much in different times that

it is difficult to estimate the different degrees of courage shown in resisting them. Men fear public opinion now as they did in former times the Star Chamber; and those awful goddesses, Appearances, are to us what the Fates were to the Greeks. It is hardly possible to measure the courage of a Modern against that of an Ancient; but I am unwilling to believe but that enlightenment must strengthen courage.

The application of the tests of greatness, as in the above instance, is a matter of detail and of nice appreciation, as to the results of which men must be expected to differ largely: the tests themselves remain invariable-openness of nature to admit the light of love and reason, and courage to pursue it.

Complete. From "Friends in Council.»

HOW HISTORY SHOULD BE READ

SUPPOSE that many who now connect the very word History with the idea of dullness, would have been fond and diligent students of history if it had had fair access to their minds. But they were set down to read histories which were not fitted to be read continuously, or by any but practiced students. Some such works are mere framework, a name which the author of the "Statesman" applies to them; very good things, perhaps, for their purpose, but that is not to invite readers to history. You might almost as well read dictionaries with a hope of getting a succinct and clear view of language. When, in any narration, there is a constant heaping up of facts, made about equally significant by the way of telling them, a hasty delineation of characters, and all the incidents moving on as in the fifth act of a confused tragedy, the mind and memory refuse to be so treated; and the reading ends in nothing but a very slight and inaccurate acquaintance with the mere husk of the history. You cannot epitomize the knowledge that it would take years to acquire into a few volumes that may be read in as many weeks.

The most likely way of attracting men's attention to historical subjects will be by presenting them with small portions of history, of great interest, thoroughly examined. This may give them the habit of applying thought and criticism to historical

matters.

For, as it is, how are people interested in history, and how do they master its multitudinous assemblage of facts? Mostly, perhaps, in this way. A man cares about some one thing, or person, or event, and plunges into its history, really wishing to master it. This pursuit extends; other points of research are taken up by him at other times. His researches begin to intersect. He finds a connection in things. The texture of his historic acquisitions gradually attains some substance and color; and so at last he begins to have some dim notions of the myriads of men who came, and saw, and did not conquer-only struggled on as they best might, some of them—and are not.

When we are considering how history should be read, the main thing perhaps is, that the person reading should desire to know what he is reading about, not merely to have read the books that tell of it. The most elaborate and careful historian must omit, or pass lightly over, many points of his subject. He writes for all readers, and cannot indulge private fancies. But history has its particular aspect for each man; there must be portions which he may be expected to dwell upon. And everywhere, even where the history is most labored, the reader should have something of the spirit of research which was needful for the writer,- if only so much as to ponder well the words of the writer. That man reads. history, or anything else, at great peril of being thoroughly misled, who has no perception of any truthfulness except that which can be fully ascertained by reference to facts; who does not in the least perceive the truth, or the reverse, of a writer's style, of his epithets, of his reasoning, of his mode of narration. In life, our faith in any narration is much influenced by the personal appearance, voice, and gesture of the person narrating. There is some part of all these things in his writing; and you must look into that well before you can know what faith to give him. One man may make mistakes in names, and dates, and references, and yet have a real substance of truthfulness in him, a wish to enlighten. himself and then you. Another may not be wrong in his facts, but have a declamatory or sophistical vein in him, much to be guarded against. A third may be both inaccurate and untruthful, caring not so much for anything as to write his book. And if the reader cares only to read it, sad work they make between them of the memories of former days.

In studying history, it must be borne in mind that a knowledge is necessary of the state of manners, customs, wealth, arts,

and science at the different periods treated of. The text of civil history requires a context of this knowledge in the mind of the reader. For the same reason, some of the main facts of the geography of the countries in question should be present to him. If we are ignorant of these aids to history, all history is apt to seem alike to us. It becomes merely a narrative of men of our own time, in our own country; and then we are prone to expect the same views and conduct from them that we do from our contemporaries. It is true that the heroes of antiquity have been represented on the stage in bagwigs, and the rest of the costume of our grandfathers; but it was the great events of their lives that were thus told—the crisis of their passions—and when we are contemplating the representation of great passions and their consequences, all minor imagery is of little moment. In a longdrawn narrative, however, the more we have in our minds of what concerned the daily life of the people we read about, the better. And in general it may be said that history, like traveling, gives a return in proportion to the knowledge that a man brings to it

Complete. Number II., on "History," from

"Friends in Council.»

JOHANN GOTTFRIED VON HERDER

(1744-1803)

BERDER'S greatest work was in making Goethe possible. Germany of the eighteenth century despised its own simplicity, and stood shamed before the pseudo-classicism of the decadent French monarchy. Herder taught German youth to look for the highest literary excellence, not in triolets and rondeaus, or even in tragedies written in lilting twelve-syllabled iambics supposed to represent the Athenian masters, but in the treasured ballads and songs of the common people, in Shakespeare, in Homer, in the Psalms of David, and in the book of Job. He taught Germany to understand the merits of the Scotch heroic ballads, which are the finest in the literature of Europe and are so nearly German that when "Bonny George Campbell" was translated into German, Longfellow mistook it for a German “lied” and retranslated it into admirable English verse not very far removed from the original Scotch. By cultivating the taste for the strong and natural simplicities of primitive literature, Herder educated the generation of German singers who, with Goethe and Schiller at their head, taught Longfellow to avoid the stiffness of the English "classical" school. So great was Herder's activity and so wide its range, that at his death, December 18th, 1803, he left material which, when collected in the Stuttgart edition of his works (1827-30), made sixty volumes. Those who cannot afford to read them all should by no means miss his "Stimmen der Völker in Liedern" (Folk Songs), and his essays on the "Spirit of Hebrew Poetry."

E

THE SUBLIMITY OF PRIMITIVE POETRY

(Euthyphron and Alcephron converse on the poetry of Job) UTHYPHRON — Every age must make its poetry consistent with its ideas of the great system of being, or if not, must at least be assured of producing a greater effect by its poetical fictions than systematic truth could secure to it. And may not this often be the case? I have no doubt that from the systems of Copernicus and Newton, of Buffon and Priestley, as elevated as poetry may be made, as from the most simple and childlike views of nature.