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sympathy of multitudes who are so ambitious of culture as to be ready to accept any novelty in the form of speculative suggestions or brilliant improvisation.

We do not propose to discuss the influence or the prospects of this Pagan tendency in American or in modern literature. Had we no higher assurance that its influence must be short-lived, history would teach us that its vagueness and barrenness must soon dry up its life. That a vigorous literature cannot be long sustained in an atmosphere of nofaith is demonstrably certain. The creative and fervent periods of English literature have been closely connected with the prevalence of a positive Christian belief, and a fervent Christian feeling. Among the writers of eminent genius now living who are influenced by the Pagan spirit, there is not one who does not give tokens of the blight and depression which the cheerfulness and fervor of a better hope would remove.

But we need not pursue our theme in these new directions. Its practical aspects have already detained us too long.

CHAPTER XI.

HISTORY AND HISTORICAL READING.

WE propose to leave the discussion of books and reading in general, and to proceed to some more particular observations upon different classes of books and different kinds of reading. Perhaps in so doing our thoughts may be less general than they have been; we cannot promise that they will be anything more than useful.

We begin with History. It seems natural to begin at this point, as history is the favorite and the common field of all industrious readers. The bright-minded boy, who is withal a little solid and thoughtful, if he is known among his companions as a great reader, usually takes a special delight in History. If he is merely bright-minded, he may be satisfied with novels or plays, childish or otherwise; but if he is also intelligent and curious, he uniformly takes to History. He usually does this very early, and not rarely he follows this taste so passionately as to seem more at home in the old and the distant than in the new and the near. Such a boy often, in the first gush of his historic enthusiasm, thinks and talks more of Athens and Pericles, of Rome and Julius Cæsar, of Moscow and Napoleon, than he does of the places and the men that are present to his senses. This taste is also conspicuous in the earnest and thoughtful among so-called well-informed men, as the steady and sturdy mechanic or farmer who thinks for himself, who expresses opinions on public affairs to which other men listen in a debating-club or a town-meeting, or when occupied in earnest talk at a shop or grocery.

Now and then we meet with a thoughtful old lady or an intelligent old gentleman, to whom history has all their life been both instruction and pastime, and the result is seen and felt in the mellowed and comprehensive views which they utter upon every subject of which they chance to speak. They are rightly revered as the oracles of their circle.

History has also a kind of precedence from having been the first form of writing. Books of history are the oldest written productions. This was both natural and necessary. The child of modern times sits on the father's knee, to listen to the stories of what happened in his childhood to himself and his play-mates-how they hunted in the forest and sported on the holidays. And so, as we may believe, was it in the earlier times. In the morning of the race, the reverent family and the deferential tribe gathered often about their patriarch to hear the story many times repeated, of those whom he had known-brave warriors, great hunters, sagacious inventors and skilful artists. As soon as language was framed into connected phrases, history began to be recited. The story-teller, as he wrote or read upon the monument of stone or wood the names of great men or the dates of great events, would expound at length the tales of which these names and numbers were only the suggestive texts. Now and then, if he had a rhythmic tongue and a vivid imagination he would frame history into a ballad—like the song of Chevy Chase, or the ballads collected by Scott in "The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," or by Percy in "The Reliques of English Poetry," or "Frithiof's Saga"-which he would recite to his family or clan, in the long twilight, or under the bright starlight, or in the deep arctic nights. Others would recite to crowds on festive occasions-as at the feast of Tabernacles among the Jews; or at the Olympic games among the Greeks when the poems of Homer were chanted in recitative; or as in the middle ages the wandering bard made

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himself welcome by his impassioned histories in verse. many of these earlier histories, not only the power of description was brought into requisition, but the imagination was allowed the freest play. Literal truth was not always so much cared for as an effective story, especially one in favor of the heroes or penates of a family or tribe. Such stories would grow most rapidly in transmission, and what was at first a somewhat faithful narration, would soon become more or less of a poetic exaggeration. When History begins to be written for the sober ends of truth, as by. Herodotus, its so-called Father, there is manifest abundant credulity and play of fancy. This spirited and cheerful narrator, with much that was true and well-attested, gathered together somewhat loosely much that he had picked up in his travels of the traditions that had come down from preceding generations in their narratives and songs, their epics and fictions. These being currently reported, when they were once written down and read, would obtain a sort of credit and footing in the faith of the world. People are so eager to know something of other times and of distant countries, that if anything passes current as a story it is soon accepted as a fact.

This is the first stage of historical writing—the period of simple and naïf narration, largely intermixed with what is purely imaginative and fictitious. It confines itself to recording such facts as strike the imagination and interest the feelings, especially of admiration and reverence; following the method of simple narration, with large credulity, few critical attempts to distinguish between truth and falsehood, and absolutely no philosophy. As writers and readers reach a more sober and less childish age, history becomes more grave and dignified in its manner, and events are recorded with a more careful exactness. To the imagination and feelings far less freedom is allowed. Facts and dates are copied with care from monuments and

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records. But history is still very credulous and undiscriminating; its writers set down without sifting the most of what they find recorded or hear reported without weighing authorities or adjusting conflicting testimonies. It is to be noticed also, that only the so-called great personages and great events, are deemed worthy to be recorded. Great battles, decisive victories, the deeds of heroes, the lives of kings and princes, of nobles and statesmen; the events which make one people the conqueror and another the subject; these stand conspicuously forth from the ordinary level of human affairs and are alone thought deserving of preservation. The fortunes of the common people, the condition of those who do not belong to the court or the aristocratic classes, the ways in which they lived, tilled the soil, built houses, sat at their tables, slept in their beds, navigated rivers and the sea or traveled by land, their customs and rites, their manners and feelings, their thoughts and their faiths, these are overlooked as beneath the so-called dignity of history. The great events judged worthy of notice are set forth in an exaggerated style, such as impresses the imagination and excites the wonder of the commonalty. Partly from the natural operation of reverence and the nobler sentiments of respect, and partly from the exalted imagination of the narrator, the great men of the past are set forth in gigantic outline and intensified coloring as something superhuman. All men were giants in the ancestral days, as the writer describes and as the reader conceives them. Many of the classic historians write in this vein, as Livy and Plutarch; and almost all of the modern writers of ancient history, till a comparatively recent period, have imitated very closely their style and spirit. As we read Plutarch's Lives, or Rollin's Ancient History, we seem to be lifted above the actual solid earth of every day life, and to fly or float in a sort of cloud or enchanted land. Lofty forms stalk before us, stately and long-robed personages, alway

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