That fine saying of Cardan, 'Tempus mea possessio, tempus ager meus,' might be the motto of the historian. Time is the field which he cultivates, and a true sense of space and distance should be one of the chief characteristics of his work. Few things are more difficult to attain than a just perspective in history. The most dramatic incidents are not the most important, and in weighing the joys and sorrows of the past our measures of judgment are almost hopelessly false. The most humane man cannot emancipate himself from the law of his nature, according to which he is more affected by some tragic circumstance which has taken place in his own house or in his own street than by a catastrophe which has carried anguish and desolation over enormous areas in a distant continent. In history, too, there are vast tracts which are almost necessarily unrealised. We judge a period mainly by its great men, by its brilliant or salient incidents, by the fortunes of a small class; and the great mass of obscure, suffering, inarticulate humanity, whose happiness is often so profoundly affected by political and military events, almost escapes our notice. It should be the object of history to bring before us past events in their true proportion and significance, and one of the greatest improvements in modern history is the increased attention which is paid to the social, industrial, and moral history of the poor. The paucity of our information and the difficulty of realising the conditions of obscure multitudes will always make this branch of history very imperfect, but it is one of the most essential to the just judgment of the past. Another task which lies before the historian is that of distinguishing proximate from ultimate causes. Our first natural impulse is to attribute a great change to the men who effected it and to the period in which it took place, and to neglect or underrate the long train of causes which had been, often through many generations, preparing its advent. A faithful historian must especially guard against this error. He must study the slow process of growth as well as the moment of efflorescence, the long progress of decay as well as the final catastrophe. He will probably find that the part played by statesmen and legislatures is less than he had imagined, and that the causes of the movements he relates must be sought over a wider area and through a longer period.