how poor should we be without them! Sir Walter Raleigh, when he was writing his “History of the World” in the Tower of London, overheard two boys quarrelling over the facts of an incident that had happened the day before; and he said to himself: “If these two boys cannot agree on an event which occurred almost before their own eyes, how can any one be profited by the narration which I am writing, of events which occurred in ages long past?” The answer which the critical historian would give to Raleigh would probably be: “Go and examine the two boys; find out their home, their relations, their circumstances, particularly the opportunities they had of seeing what they profess to have seen; and try to discover whether there was any bias in their minds that could have made them incline towards one side rather than the other. Give all that evidence, and then you are a real historian.” But is that true, and were any of the great historians satisfied with that? Was not their heart in their work, and is the heart ever far from what we call bias? Did not Herodotus, in describing the conflict between Greece and Asia, clearly espouse the cause of Greece? I know he has been called the father of lies rather than of history; but he has survived for all that. Did not Thucydides throughout his history write as the loyal son of Athens? Was Tacitus very anxious to find out all that could be said in favour of Tiberius? Was even Gibbon, in his “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” quite impartial? Ranke’s “History of the Popes,” may be very accurate, but for thousands who read Macaulay and Froude is there one who reads Ranke, except the historian by profession? History is not written for historians only. Macaulay wrote the history of the English Restoration as a partisan, and Froude made no secret on which side he would have fought, if he had lived through the storms of the English Reformation. If Macaulay had been one of the two boys of Sir Walter Raleigh, he would probably not have discovered some of the dark shadows on the face of William III. which struck the other boy; while some critics might possibly say of Froude that in drawing the picture of Henry VIII. he may have followed now and then the example of Nelson in the use of his telescope. Still, in describing such recent periods as the reign of Henry VIII., historians cannot, at all events, go very far wrong in dates or names. Froude may have been wrong in embracing the cause of Henry VIII. and accepting all the excuses or explanations which could be given for his violent acts. But Froude is, at all events, honest, in so far that no one can fail to see where his sympathies lie, so that he really leaves us free to decide what side we ourselves should take.