blame, and as lifeless as mathematicians, that a gleam of color or a flash of fire is apt to be regarded with suspicion. Yet color is not necessarily misleading; and that keen, warm grasp of a subject which gives us atmosphere as well as facts, interest as well as information, comes nearer to the veiled truth than a catalogue of correct dates and chillingly narrated incidents. It is easy for Mr. Gardiner to denounce Clarendon's "well-known carelessness about details whenever he has a good story to tell;" but what has the later historian ever said to us that will dwell in our hearts, and keep alive our infatuations and our antipathies, as do some of these condemned tales? Nay, even Mr. Gardiner's superhuman coldness in narrating such an event as the tragic death of Montrose has not saved him from at least one inaccuracy. "Montrose, in his scarlet cassock, was hanged at the Grassmarket," he says, with frigid terseness. But Montrose, as it chances, was hanged at the city cross in the High Street, midway between the Tolbooth and the Tron Church. Even the careless and highly colored Clarendon knew this, though Sir Walter Scott, it must
