miserable plight) make their daily complaints and cries to Philip Van Artavelde, their commander-in-chief."

So is the suffering city described in the simple style of the old chronicler, and with, indeed, rather more of animated narrative than history generally gives.

I now refer to the fine historical drama by a living poet, the Philip Van Artavelde of Henry Taylor,—to show how the image of the past is there presented. We gain the vision, when we read the words with which Van Artavelde addresses his companions as they see the city of Ghent lying in its wretchedness beneath them :

"Look round about on this once populous town!
Not one of these innumerous house-tops
But hides some spectral form of misery,
Some peevish, pining child, and moaning mother,
Some aged man, that in his dotage scolds,

Not knowing why he hungers,-some cold corse,
That lies unstraightened where the spirit left it.”

A still deeper sense of reality is given by the imagination being carried into the interior of one of those afflicted dwellings. Van Artavelde, meeting his sister, after her return from the awful charity of a starving and pestilential city, questions her—

"Now render me account of what befel-
Where thou hast been to-day.

Clara. It is but little.

I paid a visit first to Ukenheim,

The man, who whilome saved our father's life,
When certain Clementists and ribald folk
Assailed him at Malines. He came last night,
And said he knew not if we owed him aught,
But if we did, a peck of oatmeal now

Would pay the debt, and save more lives than one.

I went. It seemed a wealthy man's abode;
The costly drapery and good house-gear
Had, in an ordinary time, betokened
That with the occupant the world went well.
By a low couch, curtained with cloth of frieze,
Sat Ukenheim, a famine-stricken man,

With either bony fist upon his knees,

And his long back upright. His eyes were fixed And moved not, though some gentle words I spake : Until a little urchin of a child,

That called him father, crept to where he sat,

And plucked him by the sleeve, and with its small And skinny finger pointed: then he rose,

And with a low obeisance, and a smile

That looked like watery moonlight on his face,
So pale and weak a smile, he bade me welcome.
I told him that a lading of wheat-flour
Was on its way, whereat, to my surprise,
His countenance fell, and he had almost wept.
Art. Poor soul! and wherefore?

Clara. That I soon perceived.

age,

He plucked aside the curtain of the couch,
And there two children's bodies lay composed.
They seemed like twins of some ten years of
And they had died so nearly both together
He scarce could say which first: and being dead,
He put them, for some fanciful affection,
Each with its arm about the other's neck,

So that a fairer sight I had not seen

Than those two children, with their little faces
So thin and wan, so calm, and sad, and sweet.

I looked upon them long, and for a while

I wished myself their sister, and to lie

With them in death, as they did with each other;
I thought that there was nothing in the world
I could have loved so much; and then I wept;
And when he saw I wept, his own tears fell,
And he was sorely shaken and convulsed,

Through weakness of his frame and his great grief.

Art. Much pity was it he so long deferred
To come to us for aid.

Clara. It was, indeed.

But whatsoe'er had been his former pride,

He seemed a humbled and heart-broken man.
He thanked me much for what I said was sent;
But I knew well his thanks were for my tears.
He looked again upon the children's couch,
And said, low down, they wanted nothing now.
So, to turn off his eyes,

I drew the small survivor of the three

Before him; and he snatched it up, and soon

Seemed quite forgetful and absorbed. With that
I stole away."

Now this is purely imaginary; and yet, how perfectly expressive is it of the truth! How much more truthful is it than mere lifeless narrative-accuracy; and how deeply into our hearts does it carry the sense of the reality! Consider how little was known a few years ago of this same Philip Van Artavelde, until, within our own day, the vision of a living English poet's imagination is turned to the comparatively obscure region of the annals of Flanders, and forthwith Van Artavelde becomes, what even Froissart had not succeeded in making him, a familiar historical personage.

In continuing this analysis of the employment of the Imagination in the study of history, there are still higher and more precious functions, than this power of presenting picture-like impressions, which I have been endeavouring to illustrate.

We are all of us, I dare say, apt to think of the composition and the study of history as a much simpler and easier thing than it really is. But if history were no more than a mere chronicle of facts,-a mere record of

men, their deeds, and their dates, reflect how soon there gather over these uncertainty, obscurity, and blank oblivion. It may be that the historian is toiling to recover the knowledge of some far remote age—that he strives to decipher the timeworn inscriptions of a lost language, or the mystery of hieroglyphics, or that he questions the awful silence of the Pyramids, which, almost as long, it might seem, as the earth has endured, have been pointing to the sun, or bearing on their huge bulk the darkness of the night. Or it may be that the historian's labour is not upon the scant materials of a dim antiquity, but upon the immense accumulation from which the history of a later time is to be extracted. Now, in either case, it is scarcely possible to estimate justly, much less to exaggerate, the magnitude of such labour, or the might of human genius, that is needed to achieve even an approach to it. This has been eloquently set forth by a thoughtful living author, in a sentence which reminds me of the magnificent structure of the prose of Milton or Jeremy Taylor:-"The field of operation is so vast and unsurveyable, so much lies wrapped up in thick, impenetrable darkness, while other portions are obscured by the mists which the passions of men have spread over them, and a spot, here and there, shines out dazzlingly, throwing the adjacent parts into the shade; the events are so inextricably intertwisted and conglomerated, sometimes thrown together in a heap,often rushing onward and spreading out like the Rhine, until they lose themselves in a morass, and now and then, after having disappeared, rising up again, as was fabled of the Alpheus, in a distant region, which they reach through an unseen channel; the peaks, which first

meet our eyes, are mostly so barren, while the fertilizing waters flow secretly through the valleys; the statements of events are so perpetually at variance, and not seldom contradictory; the actors on the ever-shifting stage are so numerous and promiscuous; so many undistinguishable passions, so many tangled opinions, so many mazy prejudices are ever at work, rolling and tossing to and fro in a sleepless conflict, in which every man's hand and heart seem to be against his neighbour, and often against himself; it is so impossible to discern and separate the effects brought about by man's will and energy, from those which are the result of outward causes, of circumstances, of conjunctures, of all the mysterious agencies summed up under the name of chance; and it requires so much faith, as well as wisdom, to trace any thing like a pervading overruling law through the chaos of human affairs, and to perceive how the banner which God has set up, is still borne pauselessly onward, even while the multitudinous host seems to be struggling waywardly, busied in petty bickerings and personal squabbles;-that a perfect, consummate history of the world may not unreasonably be deemed the loftiest achievement that the mind of man can contemplate."* It is from the entangled and enormous mass, thus described, of memorials, and traditions, and records, that history is to be evolved. For the work, there is not a faculty of the human mind that is not needed, besides the great moral qualification—a love of truth, that shall be at once calm in its action, and passionate in its earnestness and its impatient hatred of falsehood. What concerns my present subject chiefly is,

Hare's Guesses at Truth. First Series, p. 353.