When we can contemplate the people of a past age
employed in their own occupations, observe their habits and manners,
comprehend their policy and their methods of pursuing it, our
imagination is quick to clothe them with the flesh and blood of human
brotherhood and to bring them into full sympathy with our individual
nature.
History then becomes a world of living figures,--a theatre that
presents to us a majestic drama, varied by alternate scenes of the
grandest achievements and the most touching episodes of human
existence.
In the composing of this drama the author has need to seek his
material in many a tangled thicket as well as in many an open field.
Facts accidentally encountered, which singly have but little
perceptible significance, are sometimes strangely discovered to
illustrate incidents long obscured and incapable of explanation. They
are like the lost links of a chain, which, being found, supply the
means of giving cohesion and completeness to the heretofore useless
fragments. The scholar's experience is full of these reunions of
illustrative incidents gathered from regions far apart in space, and
often in time. The historian's skill is challenged to its highest
task in the effort to draw together those tissues of personal and
local adventure which, at first without seeming or suspected
dependence, prove, when brought into their proper relationship with
each other, to be unerring exponents of events of highest concern.
Pages:
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79