building up of the final structure on a foundation still shaken by the cataclysms of the preceding century.
Any writer who loves his country is at liberty to help foreigners to a better opinion of it, but at the same time he should be scrupulously careful to write nothing that is not in the strictest accordance with historical truth. I may say that this has invariably been my own procedure, and I consider that, so far from serving my country, I should be dishonouring her if I tried to exalt her either at the expense of neighbouring and rival countries, or by representing facts in an illusory light. It will be seen that my attack is chiefly directed against those legends with which contemporary history and more especially our own annals abound. They have sprung in the first instance from a wrong point of view inspired by the passions of the moment, and from that want of balanced judgment, by which, unless there come a very vigorous reaction, human nature is too easily carried away. They falsify history in the most pernicious fashion, and by falsifying history they end by falsifying the historic sense. It is just as absurd to maintain, for instance, that
