ing public volume after volume; but the great masters of literary-form, in history as in poetry, alone retain their hold. Thucydides, Tacitus and Gibbon are always there, on a level with the eye; while those of their would-be successors who find themselves unable to tell us what they know, in a way in which we care to hear it, or within limits consistent with human life, are quietly relegated to the oblivion of the topmost shelf.
I fear that I am myself in danger of sinning somewhat flagrantly against the canons I have laid down. Exceeding my allotted space, I am conscious of disregarding any correct rule of form by my attempt at dealing with more subjects than it is possible on one occasion adequately to discuss. None the less I cannot resist the temptation,—I am proving myself an American; and having gone thus far, I will now go on to the end, even though alone. There are, I hold, three elements which enter into the make-up of the ideal historian, whether him of the past or him of the future;—these three are learning, judgment and the literary sense. A perfect history, like a perfect poem, must have a beginning, a middle and an end; and the well proportioned parts should be kept in strict subservience to the whole. The dress, also, should be in keeping with the substance; and both subordinated to the conception. Attempting no display of erudition, pass the great historical literatures and names in rapid review, and see in how few instances all these canons were observed. And first, the Hebrew. While the Jew certainly was not endowed with the Greek's sense of form in sculpture, in painting or in architecture, in poetry and music he was, and has since been, pre-eminent. His philosophy and his history found their natural expression through his aptitudes. The result illustrates the supreme intellectual power exercised by art. Of learning and judgment there is only pretense; but imagination and power are there: and, even to this day, the Hebrew historical writings are a distinct literature,—we call them "The Sacred Books." We have passed from under that superstition; and yet it still holds a traditional sway. The books of Moses are merely a first tentative effort on the road subsequently
trodden by Herodotus, Livy and Voltaire; but their author was so instinct with imagination and such a master of form that to this day his narrative is read and accepted as history by more human beings than are all the other historical works in existence combined in one mass. No scholar or man of reflection now believes that Moses was any more inspired than Homer, Julius Caesar or Thomas Carlyle; but the imagination and intellectual force of the man, combined with his instinct for literary form, sufficed to secure for what he wrote a unique mastery only in our day shaken.
