ruling while he seems to yield to it.

It is Nature's drama,--not Shakespeare's, but a drama none the less.

So at least it seems to me. Wherever possible, let us not be told
_about_ this man or that. Let us hear the man himself speak, let us see
him act, and let us be left to form our own opinions about him. The
historian, we are told, must not leave his readers to themselves. He
must not only lay the facts before them: he must tell them what he
himself thinks about those facts. In my opinion, this is precisely what
he ought not to do. Bishop Butler says somewhere, that the best book
which could be written would be a book consisting only of premises, from
which the readers should draw conclusions for themselves. The highest
poetry is the very thing which Butler requires, and the highest history
ought to be. We should no more ask for a theory of this or that period
of history, than we should ask for a theory of "Macbeth" or "Hamlet."
Philosophies of history, sciences of history,--all these there will
continue to be: the fashions of them will change, as our habits of
thought will change; each new philosopher will find his chief employment
in showing that before him no one understood any thing; but the drama of
history is imperishable, and the lessons of it will be like what we
learn from Homer or Shakespeare,--lessons for which we have no words.

The address of history is less to the understanding than to the higher
emotions. We learn in it to sympathize with what is great and good; we
learn to hate what is base. In the anomalies of fortune we feel the
mystery of our mortal existence; and in the companionship of the
illustrious natures who have shaped the fortunes of the world, we escape
from the littlenesses which cling to the round of common life, and our
minds are tuned in a higher and nobler key.