At the same time, however, that we claim for history great powers of instruction, we must not imagine that the examples which it furnishes will enable its readers to anticipate the experience of life. An experienced man reads that Cæsar did this or that, but he says to himself, “I am not Cæsar.” Or, indeed, as is most probable, the reader has not to reject the application of the example to himself: for from first to last he sees nothing but experience for Cæsar in what Cæsar was doing. I think it may be observed, too, that general maxims about life gain the ear of the inexperienced, in preference to historical examples. But neither wise sayings nor historical examples can be understood without experience. Words are only symbols. Who can know anything soundly with respect to the complicated affections and struggles of life, unless he has experienced some of them? All knowledge of humanity spreads from within. So in studying history, the lessons it teaches must have something to grow round in the heart they teach. Our own trials, misfortunes, and enterprises are the best lights by which we can read history. Hence it is that many an historian may see far less into the depths of the very history he has himself written than a man who, having acted and suffered, reads the history in question with all the wisdom that comes from action and suffering. Sir Robert Walpole might naturally exclaim, “Do not read history to me, for that, I know, must be false.” But if he had read it, I do not doubt that he would have seen through the film of false and insufficient narrative into the depth of the matter narrated, in a way that men of great experience can alone attain to. II. HOW HISTORY SHOULD BE READ. I suppose that many who now connect the very word history with the idea of dulness, would have been fond and diligent students of history if it had had fair access to their minds. But they were set down to read histories which were not fitted to be read continuously, or by any but practised students. Some such works are mere framework, a name which the author of the _Statesman_ applies to them; very good things, perhaps, for their purpose, but that is not to invite readers to history. You might almost as well read dictionaries with a hope of getting a succinct and clear view of language. When, in any narration, there is a constant heaping up of facts, made about equally significant by the way of telling them, a hasty delineation of characters, and all the incidents moving on as in the fifth act of a confused tragedy, the mind and memory refuse to be so treated; and the reading ends in nothing but a very slight and inaccurate acquaintance with the mere husk of the history. You cannot epitomise the knowledge that it would take years to acquire into a few volumes that may be read in as many weeks.