is derived. Perhaps the inferences of the writer may be denied, or his arguments may be deemed fallacious, but the sources of his work are admitted, without contest, as authentic testimonies. We are sufficiently careful to guard against the errors of the author, particularly when the subject is such as to offer a probability of his being either deceived himself, or inclined to deceive his readers, a misled follower or a fallacious guide. Should any suspicions arise, we contest his qualifications, we examine his principles, we ask for his creed. And if we are disposed to try the history by the severest test, we compare it with the original authorities,' ancient and we examine whether the facts which rest upon dence are fairly and faithfully recited or rendered. If the author's text and the authorities' which he quotes are found to agree, we are satisfied. After this investigation has been performed our inquiries end. The vigilance awakened by the modern Historian is rarely excited by the ancient Chronicler. Upon our ancestors we willingly bestow the faith which we withdraw from our contemporaries, and consider all as very sooth' which has the venerable sanction of grave antiquity. evi Our disinclination to examine into the positive veracity and comparative value of the ancient sources of ancient history may be easily explained. The individuals who flourished in the many, long, remote centuries, which we denote by the comprehensive, term of the middle ages,' are so essentially distinguished by language, manner and mind, from the individuals of the living age, that they seem to form but one class when contrasted with our contemporaries. All minor distinctions amongst them are, lost in the general conformity. The Nun of Sion prays beside the Benedictine Monk of Lindisfarne. Mailed crusaders unite with the ranks of the gallant chivalry of the Tilt Yard. Plantagenets and Tudors meet in the same presence-chamber. The interval by which they are separated from us, appears to place all their forms at the same distance. All are equally uncouth and strange. Enveloped alike in mist and gloom, we are impressed with a vague idea of remoteness, and we do not sufficiently measure the gradations in which they recede. Hume, in the first chapters of his history, affords a curious exemplification of the deceptions thus produced by the aërial perspective of the mind. It might be anticipated that the author of the Essay on Miracles would have prefaced his historical inquiries by carefully scrutinizing the value of his authorities. In endea vouring to establish his facts by an appeal to historical testimony, we might have expected some recollection of his own rules. We have been taught by him to attend to the character of the witnesses, to balance every circumstance which can occasion doubt, doubt, and to mark every cause of suspicion. Such, however, is far from being his mode of proceeding, when he had occasion to practise his own maxims. Hume has not even observed the obvious rule of avoiding to adduce secondary evidence when an original witness can be obtained. At the foot of his pages we have, certainly, a cabbalistic array of names, and syllables, and figures; but this host of quotations can only betray the reader into a belief that the history has resulted from a careful comparison of testimonies. A more minute examination of the authorities will dispel our reliance on the judgment of the historian. Without any selection, any attempt at discrimination, we find the Saxon Chronicle and Florence of Worcester, William of Malmesbury, Ralph Higden and Matthew of Westminster, all considered as the vouchers for the events of the reign of the Confessor, and, apparently, with equal confidence and satisfaction. Yet, how different are the grounds upon which they are to be trusted!-The Saxon Chronicle may be considered, in this portion, as coeval with the events which it relates.-Florence of Worcester, in the corresponding sections of his Latin Chronicle, is merely a translator of the Saxon Chronicle; and his version, though of great importance in affording an assistance to the right interpretation of the Anglo-Saxon text, is without any weight if quoted as cumulative testimony.-William of Malmesbury, removed but by one generation from the Anglo-Saxon age, was enabled to consult authorities which cannot be traced in any other ancient historian.-Ralph Higden flourished towards the close of the reign of Edw. III., and his Chronicle, a new edition of a compilation formed by Roger of Chester, who wrote a few years before, consists entirely of excerpts from original writers, all of which are extant, connected by his own remarks and annotations. Matthew of Westminster is a phantom who never existed. If such an uncritical use of ancient authorities was made by Hume, a reasoner gifted with singular acuteness and sagacity, and trained and exercised in the very school of scepticism, we may well account for the impression usually received respecting those passages of history which are as familiar to us as household words. The authorities being all admitted to be valid, it follows as a necessary consequence that the facts remain unchallenged. Adventures inseparably associated to well-known names; deeds which have been recounted to us from our earliest childhood; monarchs whose grim imaginary portraitures have been presented to us so often that we recognize them as easily as the countenances of our own parents, form the popular materials and characters of popular history. Seldom do they offer themselves in such a guise as to excite any degree of hesitation. The utmost extent of our incredulity is to disbelieve that Saint Dunstan really pulled the Devil by the nose. From the Trojan war to the battle of Bosworth field, the scenes of ancient history' rise up successively with undiminished vividness and unimpeached credibility. * ་ If, however, we pause, and reflect upon the nature of the sources of history, our confidence must in some measure forsake us. Every nation has passed through an heroic age, during which no evidence, in the strict sense of the term, can be preserved of historical facts. Truth maintains a perpetual conflict with fiction. The causes which stamp such an era with its distinguishing character destroy the fidelity of its records. During the various stages of incipient civilization, the might of some one individual, pre-eminent either for physical or moral power, is the main-spring of the fortunes of society. When the skill and prowess of one chieftain enables him to decide the battle, his achievements obtain a much more minute and favoured narrative than the fate of the nation whom he leads to victory. Recollections are attached to the glory of the warrior, not to the annals of the commonwealth. Giants overshadow the subject world, and beneath the colossal forms of legislators and leaders we lose all sense of the importance which belongs to the herd of human-kind. History therefore is founded, in the first instance, upon individual biography. It is then essentially poetical. Political events mould themselves into an epic unity, and the history of the nation is subordinate to the destiny of the hero. The task of commemoration devolves upon the bard, and the exaggerations and licenses of poetry become in their turn the foundations of historical annals, in which the creations of fancy are recorded as realities without any indication of their unsubstantial origin. Even in more advanced stages of society, there may be a stream of romance concurrent with history, and which may delude us after we have emerged from the deceptive splendours of the heroic era. It requires an effort to abandon a pleasing fable. In the chroniclers of the twelfth century, there is often a strong resemblance between the Charlemagne of Turpin and the Charlemagne of Eginhart; and the epithet of lion-hearted, which we fondly annex to the name of our first Richard, can be traced to no better authority than the "geste,' from which, perhaps, much of the chivalrous bonour which we attach to his character is also to be derived. The chronicles of the nations of modern Europe owe their origin to a class of writers produced by institutions unknown to classical antiquity, and possessing a character which will never be again revived. It is not unusual to stigmatize the monkish historians as dull and credulous writers, equally devoid of taste or judgment. To enlarged and philosophical views of history, they possess possess no claim whatever. And the very few compositions of this class which exhibit any degree of literary talent are only rare exceptions from the rule of general mediocrity. Yet, if impar tially considered, they will not be perused without interest. Political discussion was unknown. The keen subtilizing spirit of the schools found sufficient employment in the mazes of the ecclesias tical commonwealth. As yet, the arcana of the state were undis cussed or undivulged. But the monks treated history as every other branch of human knowledge then cultivated was treated, They studied history in connexion with religion., Human deeds and events were not narrated as resulting from the policy of man, kind, but as parts of the great scheme of Providence, revealed, foretold, exemplified. Sacred and profane history were united into one body, or rather all was sacred history. If they opened the annals of the nations they read them as the comments of holy writ. The Bible was the foundation of all faith and of all history. In each of the great monarchies as it rose and fell, they acknowledged the accomplishment of the mystic vision of the Seer, Whenever calamities afflicted a nation, they anticipated the pouring out of the vials of wrath reserved for the latter day. The blazing star announced impending vengeance. Pestilence and famine and slaughter are deplored as chastisements, not related as misfortunes. This mode of thought gave a monstrous tone and colouring to their compositions, but, at the same time, they acquire from it a degree of harmony and unity of effect which is neither unsa tisfactory nor unpleasing. The extent of information varied, of course, with the diligence and activity of each individual writer. Research and labour might accomplish mighty tasks when knowledge could be gathered from the shelves of the library; but unless the chroni cler was invested with a station which placed him in the busy haunts of men, his opportunities of becoming acquainted with the history of his own times must have been limited and rare. We, who live in an age and country in which the means of locomotion and communication have been facilitated by all the power of human ingenuity and science, can scarcely imagine to ourselves the difficulty of obtaining intelligence in those regions where newspapers are unknown, and whose peaceful solitudes have never been disturbed by the bugle of the mail-coach guard. Destitute of these aids, even bad news does not fly apace; and the details of passing events, which in the course of eight-and-forty hours are transmitted from the Channel to the border, could scarcely creep the same distance in a twelvemonth, when Fame was compelled to limp with her dispatches along the primitive ruts and patriarchal bridle-paths of Watling Street and Ikenild Street, and the other renowned highways, 'That That the olde Kynges mad where thoru men may wende From the on ende of Engel lond north to the other ende. Epistolary correspondence was confined to a small class of the community. The Abbot returning from the synod perhaps whispered to the older brethren the particulars of the last dissension between the King and his nobles; or the monks listened to the pilgrim, fraught with the account of the wars which, some seven years before, had taken place between the Soudan and his rebellious vassals, the heathen hounds of Benamarin or Garbo. Narrations produced from such communications cannot fail to be loose, vague, and unsatisfactory. And when Montesquieu speaks of the faiseurs de chroniques, qui savoient à peu près de l'histoire de leur temps ce que les villageois savent aujourd'hui de celle du nôtre,' he hardly exaggerates their average ignorance, Inaccurate in their source, the statements thus embodied must often have been deeply tinged by popular prejudices and popular passions. The period of poetical romance has its bounds, but when can we escape from the romance of faction and of party? Can we discover a conspiracy which has not become an article of faith in the heated imaginations of the one party, or a crimihal whom the other faction has not venerated as a martyr? Let century be placed in parallel with century, and age with age, and the chance of our being enabled to pronounce an accurate judg ment upon remote transactions may be estimated by the impracti cability of affording any satisfactory solution of the historical problems whose dates are to be placed almost in our times. Mary Stuart ought never to be acquitted until Brunehault is finally condemned. Nor can this difficulty be a subject of surprize. In the most enlightened periods the uncertainty of all human testimony perpetually baffles and deludes the inquirer. The more momentous the question, the greater is the difficulty of meeting with an unbiassed and competent relator. He who best knows the truth is usually the person most tempted to distort or conceal the knowledge of which he is possessed. To these moral causes of perplexity must be added the obstacles arising from the paucity of written records of ancient history. After Rome was reduced to ashes by the Gauls, where could the writers of the republic peruse the annals of her kings? A single manuscript has often been the sole depositary of the best and surest monuments of history, which, had it perished, would have been entirely lost. Ignorance and neglect consume the relics which have been exempted from the devastations of war and conquest. If any have escaped, they are preserved by chances almost beyond the limits of probability. Nor must we overlook the various causes which impede us in extracting the truth from those |