Yet it must be admitted, that the chronicler who records the events of an
earlier age has some obvious advantages in the store of manuscript
materials at his command,--the statements of friends, rivals, and enemies,
furnishing a wholesome counterpoise to each other; and also, in the
general course of events, as they actually occurred, affording the best
commentary on the true motives of the parties. The actor, engaged in the
heat of the strife, finds his view bounded by the circle around him and
his vision blinded by the smoke and dust of the conflict: while the
spectator, whose eye ranges over the ground from a more distant and
elevated point, though the individual objects may lose somewhat of their
vividness, takes in at a glance all the operations of the field. Paradoxical
as it may appear, truth rounded on contemporary testimony would seem,
after all, as likely to be attained by the writer of a later day, as by
contemporaries themselves.

Before closing these remarks, I may be permitted to add a few of a
personal nature. In several foreign notices of my writings, the author has
been said to be blind; and more than once I have had the credit of having
lost my sight in the composition of my first history. When I have met
with such erroneous accounts, I have hastened to correct them. But the
present occasion affords me the best means of doing so; and I am the
more desirous of this, as I fear some of my own remarks, in the Prefaces
to my former histories, have led to the mistake.

While at the University, I received an injury in one of my eyes, which
deprived me of the sight of it. The other, soon after, was attacked by
inflammation so severely, that, for some time, I lost the sight of that also;
and though it was subsequently restored, the organ was so much
disordered as to remain permanently debilitated, while twice in my life,