And scientific history, and also scientific biography, will for another century be a voice crying in the beautiful wilderness of legend, myth, philosophical opinion, political prejudice, and patriotic enthusiasm. We can cheerfully leave this scientific history where it belongs, in the hands of historians and special students. The better for us as readers if we can read the great histories with the same delight and somewhat the same kind of interest that we bring to the reading of romances. There will be enough truth in them to give us a fairly just view of former ages. The culture and humanity will be there. Shakespeare’s stories of English kings give us the spirit of England. Carlyle’s “French Revolution” will never cease to be a splendid work of art. Bancroft’s “History of the United States” will remain a noble celebration of democracy, even though he was not strict in his use of documents. In school we expect to learn true lessons in history, to get our dates right and keep our judgments impartial. Out of school we shall read history for pleasure and like it the better if it is informed with the eloquence, the prejudice, the philosophy, in short the personality of a great writer. There are certain books that occur immediately as introductions to the various departments of literature. We agreed that Palgrave’s “Golden Treasury” is the best book to put into the hands of one knocking for the first time at the door of poetry. Boswell’s “Life of Johnson” is a perfect biography to win the new reader’s liking for biographical literature and memoirs. And so there is one volume of history that seems the best of all books in which English-speaking youth may read the great story of the race, Green’s “Short History of the English People.” One might wish from patriotic motives that there were an American history equally good, but there is none, so far as I know--none which covers our national life as a whole. We can, however, be content with Green, for the American cannot know his own history or his own literature and traditions without knowing those of England. Our literature is English literature and must be for centuries to come, and in most of our reading of poetry and fiction we shall find that the history of England is involved more deeply than the history of our country. The merits of Green’s History, the literary merits, are its clear arrangements, the fine lucidity of the writing, its condensation of national movements into rich chapters where, as from a peak one overlooks the great epochs of disaster and progress. These are the opening sentences: