668 Niebuhr on the Distijictioji originally bore this name ; and this not as the result of acci- dent, but most carefully preserved ; with no more difference than between a Madonna of Cimabue and one of Raphael. Each year is kept strictly apart from the rest, so that the writer expressly declines mentioning occurrences which, ac- cording to the nature of the subject, would have found their proper place before the time when they happened (Ann. iv. 71): the course of events which occupy a longer period is always interrupted by the change of the year. In the compass of the year the most heterogeneous matters are recorded, often inci- dents of no moment, though still interesting for contempo- raries : many which a history of the Romans and the Empire, if it did not entirely exclude them, would have placed in an episode. These manifold subjects are put side by side without any connexion : he rather avoids linking them together. No less deliberately does this great master of his art observe the character of the record^ and preserve the distinction between it and a narrative which exhibits a comprehensive survey of its whole field. It is agreeably to this character that he gives only a partial account of events ; sometimes omitting what the reader s thoughts may supply, sometimes, to avoid prolixity, singling out detached parts of that which, if given entire, would have taken up a large space. So much the clearer light does he endeavour to throw on the masses which he selects; this part of the Annals is like St Peter's seen under the illu- mination of the cross, where most parts of the building lie in darkness, and are invisible, while others are the more strongly delineated by the shadows which they bound : the history is rather recalled to our thoughts by the light of the sun, when it falls upon the same building through the great window of the tribune, and shews everything in broad day. It is true that even then this is not the clearness of objects seen under the open sky, in noontide brightness : as history is always less vividly coloured than a present reality, or the remembrance of it. The imperfection and hurry of the narrative in this work cannot always be defended, nor can it be denied that here Tacitus has sometimes erred. A painful effect, like that of a discord unresolved, is produced by his dropping the pro- ceedings of the senate, before the decree on the power of Tiberius had put an end to their torment (Ann. i. 14): and
