victories of Cannæ and Thrasymene; or the nameless boor who first hammered out for himself an iron spade? When the oak tree is felled, the whole forest echoes with it; but a hundred acorns are planted silently by some unnoticed breeze. {1651} Battles and war-tumults, which for the time din every ear, and with joy or terror intoxicate every heart, pass away like tavern-brawls; and, except some few Marathons and Morgartens, are remembered by accident, not by desert. Laws themselves, political Constitutions, are not our Life, but only the house wherein our Life is led: nay they are but the bare walls of the house; all whose essential furniture, the inventions and traditions, and daily habits that regulate and support our existence, are the work not of Dracos and Hampdens, but of Phœnician mariners, of Italian masons and Saxon metallurgists, of philosophers, alchymists, prophets, and all the long-forgotten train of artists and artisans; who from the first have been jointly teaching us how to think and how to act, how to rule over spiritual and over physical Nature. Well may we say that of our History the more important part is lost without recovery." _T. Carlyle, On History (Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, volume 2)._ HISTORY: Interpretation of the Past by the Present. "But how, it may be asked, are we to interpret the Past from the Present, if there are no institutions in the present answering to those in the past? We have no serfs, for example, in England at the present time, how then are we to understand a state of Society of which they were a component element? The answer is—by analogy, by looking at the essence of the relation. Between a modern master and his lackeys and dependents, the same essential relation subsists as between the lord and serf of feudal times. If we realise to ourselves the full round of this relationship, deepen the shades to correspond with the more absolute power possessed by a lord in early times, allow for a more aristocratic state of opinion and belief, the result will be the solution desired. This method of interpreting the Past from the Present has been followed by Shakespeare in his great historical dramas, with such success as we all know. He wishes, for example, to give us a picture of old Roman times. He gets from Plutarch and other sources the broad historical facts, the form of Government and Religion, the distribution of Power and Authority: this is the skeleton to which he has to give life and reality. How does he proceed? He simply takes his stand on the times in which he himself lived; notes the effects existing institutions have on his own and other minds; allows for the differences in custom, mode of life, and political and religious forms; and the result is a drama or dramas more real