self these pleasures, he is sure to make amends by recounting with tenfold aggravation the particulars of the last shipwreck, or gazing with blood-shot eyes at the wonders of the last moon hoax. A principle which is thus enduring and efficient, should be made to strengthen the power of truth, as it certainly gives energy to falsehood. As it is used in the beginning, so it should be used to the end of education. Let the power of the narrative be united with, instead of against the power of truth. gather up the images of the right, the beautiful, and the glorious, as they lie scattered up and down the scene of life, and weigh them against its idols, its dross, and corruptions. Let it In this nature assists truth, for it has become a maxim, that there is nothing in fiction equal to the reality; and all who reflect will readily acknowledge the fact. The imagination has never painted baseness so deep, as that to which human nature has voluntarily sunk; nor has it in its highest flights been able to conceive of the strength or nobleness of the spirit, either in its trials of duty or its powers of achievement. It has never painted a scene, in depth of tenderness, or agony of suffering, or complication of misery, of beauty in virtue, of the heroic in conduct, or the terrible in crime, which has not been a thousand times more than equalled by the pencil of nature. And how can it be otherwise? What materials has imagination which the world has not furnished? And how can her abstracted colorings equal in depth or brilliancy the hues which real feeling throws around its objects? Hence it is that the novelist has seldom succeeded in heightening the interest of any great historical character or remarkable event. Indeed the very contrary has generally been the case, while he trod on strictly historical ground. It is only when he assumes the vantage ground of a continuous, connected, and unencumbered personal narrative, which history from its multifarious circumstances cannot take, that the novelist succeeds in imparting to his historical characters half the interest of the original. Compare, for example, Walter Scott with Hume. There is no character of Scott stronger impressed upon the minds of his readers than the brave, stern, cruel, uncompromising royalist, Graham of Claverhouse. Yet who will compare him to the Viscount Dundee, following with bigoted, yet devoted heroism the fortunes of his master, when deserted by his own daughter, till victory meets him in death at the pass of Killycrankie? Who will compare the Mary of the Abbot with the fascinating royal beauty, who drew around her the circles of France, and the knighthood of Scotland? Who shall compare the Elizabeth of Kenilworth with the maiden Queen of England? In fact, wherever we go, we find a depth of interest and a splendor of scenery around real characters and events which no invention of the novelist has ever been able to exceed. What in pathos can surpass the massacre of Glencoe, or the speech of our Logan? Who shall describe a more eventful life, or a more beautiful character, than that of Alfred? Who, from the Arabian Nights to the Mysteries of Udolpho, shall find a drama more terrible in interest, more gorgeous in scenery, or more strange in catastrophe, than that last great tragedy in which the Corsican figured, from the plains of France to the dark rolling Danube, and from the vale of the Arno to the sands of Egypt? It is not, then, want of interest in historical subjects, which should exclude them from the body of our literature. On the contrary, could they be united with a continuity of personal narrative, they would far exceed, in that respect, any invention of fiction. Indeed, no youth worth having ever commenced the history of Napoleon Bonaparte, and left it off: night and day will he follow the army of France, from the field of Marengo to the plain of Smolensk; and when, at an after period, he has come to understand something of the changes of nations, and the mutability of human affairs, he will wonder why it was that nations have risen and sunk; that laws have varied; and that such men as Cæsar and Bonaparte have swept over nations with the besom of destruction. His love of inquiry is excited; he pursues the history of the human mind; he finds it progressing in spite of the wrecks around it; out of ruins it builds new structures; out of ashes its fires revive; he sees that the history of nations, of dynasties, and of men, is not the history of human nature; he finds that when these, and all that is external in the forms of society, have perished, the social principle remains, the treasury of knowledge is not exhausted; and that mind, passing through a chrysalis state, assumes a new form more beautiful than the last, ascends to new regions of discovery and invention, and though, like the bird in the tempest, often baffled, holds on its course with tireless wing. : It is at this point that he returns to history, as a science the only science which can unfold this development and demonstration of the powers of the human mind. The commencement of this investigation, we have said, was the love of the narrative, which begins with the personal narrative of history, and ends in elevating the literary taste by elevating the objects of its pursuit. As an example, we are told of a remarkable man, who is at the head of the literature of France, if not of Europe, a man of mingled romance, poetry, and politics, who has a large library without a single work upon any other topic than history. We have said that the love of narrative was to the full as much interested in realities as in fiction. But how is it to be excited? By using the same means to cultivate a taste for truth, which we do for fiction: by placing well-written, lively, and personal narratives before the mind, when the world is a novelty to it, and every new fact a marvel. Language and facts are, in respect to knowledge, the business of boyhood; to use and digest them, the business of manhood. Every picture of history is as much a new world to youth, as the opening glories of nature to the child. HISTORY THE DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN NATURE. Having now considered the use of history as an instrument of literature, we come to consider the science of history as a development of human na ture. The basis of sound philosophy is said by Bacon to be experience; and if the experience of an individual is the basis of knowledge with him, surely the experience of the human race, as a social mass, furnishes the true means of deducing the laws of social conduct in that mass. It is in this respect that the science of statistics becomes collateral to that of history: it collects and compares the experience of nations upon definite topics, and verifies the results with the accuracy of mathematical calculation; and it is not till this is done thoroughly and extensively, that the legislator and the educationalist can make any safe estimate upon the mutual influences of mind and matter as developed in the social system. If the commerce, the religion, and the science of England have done much to enlarge her empire, her improvements in the arts of agriculture have not done less: they have enabled her to feed fourteen millions of persons upon ground which a little time before supported but six. It is thus we see that the physical acts must be counted and weighed, before we can tell what powers propel the wheels of society. He who |