the forces at work, the passions overwhelming or upheaving, the
aspirations securely upraising, the selfishnesses debasing and
crumbling, with the vital interworking of the whole; to illuminate all
from the analogy with individual life, and from the predominant phases
of individual character which are taken as the mind of the people--this
is the province of the imagination. Without her influence no process of
recording events can develop into a history. As truly might that be
called the description of a volcano which occupied itself with a
delineation of the shapes assumed by the smoke expelled from the
mountain's burning bosom. What history becomes under the full sway of
the imagination may be seen in the "History of the French Revolution,"
by Thomas Carlyle, at once a true picture, a philosophical revelation, a
noble poem.

There is a wonderful passage about _Time_ in Shakespere's "Rape of
Lucrece," which shows how he understood history. The passage is really
about history, and not about time; for time itself does nothing--not
even "blot old books and alter their contents." It is the forces at work
in time that produce all the changes; and they are history. We quote for
the sake of one line chiefly, but the whole stanza is pertinent.

"Time's glory is to calm contending kings,
To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light,
To stamp the seal of time in aged things,
To wake the morn and sentinel the night,
_To wrong the wronger till he render right;_
To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours,
And smear with dust their glittering golden towers."

_To wrong the wronger till he render right._ Here is a historical cycle