1. History should be an accurate record of events, and nothing more; an exact and disinterested statement of what has taken place, concealing nothing and coloring nothing, reciting incidents in their natural connections, without bias, prejudice, or didactic application of any kind. This is certainly a high ideal and an excellent model. For many, yes, for the majority of historical works, none better can be suggested. I place it first and name it as worthiest of all current theories of historical composition. But, I would submit to you, is a literary production answering to this precept, really _History_? Is it anything more than a well-prepared annal or chronicle? Is it, in fact anything else than a compilation containing the materials of which real history should be composed? I consider that the mission of the historian, taken in its completest sense, is something much more, much higher, than the collection and narration of events, no matter how well this is done. The historian should be like the man of science, and group his facts under inductive systems so as to reach the general laws which connect and explain them. He should, still further, be like the artist, and endeavor so to exhibit these connections under literary forms that they present to the reader the impression of a symmetrical and organic unity, in which each part or event bears definite relations to all others. Collection and collation are not enough. The historian must "work up his field notes," as the geologists say, so as to extract from his data all the useful results which they are capable of yielding. I am quite certain that in these objections I can count on the suffrages of most. For the majority of authors write history in a style widely different from that which I have been describing. They are distinctly teachers, though not at all in accord as to what they teach. They are generally advocates, and with more or less openness maintain what I call the second theory of the aim of history, to wit: 2. History should be a collection of evidence in favor of certain opinions. In this category are to be included all religious and political histories. Their pages are intended to show the dealings of God with man; or the evidences of Christianity, or of one of its sects, Catholicism or Protestantism; or the sure growth of republican or of monarchial institutions; or the proof of a divine government of the world; or the counter-proof that there is no such government; and the like.