the matter of mechanical arrangement, by which through title-pages, chapter-headings, and indices the reader may expeditiously refer to any desired topic, and find all that the work contains about any event, period, place, institution, man, or book; and above all I have aimed at exactness. * * * * * We hear much of the philosophy of history, of the science and signification of history; but there is only one way to write anything, which is to tell the truth, plainly and concisely. As for the writer, I will only say that while he should lay aside for the time his own religion and patriotism, he should be always ready to recognize the influence and weigh the value of the religion and patriotism of others. The exact historian will lend himself neither to idolatry nor to detraction, and will positively decline to act either as the champion or assailant of any party or power. Friendships and enmities, loves and hates, he will throw into the crucible of evidence to be refined and cast into forms of unalloyed truth. He must be just and humble. To clear judgment he must add strict integrity and catholicity of opinion. Ever in mind should be the occult forces that move mankind, and the laws by which are formulated belief, conscience, and character. The actions of men are governed by proximate states of mind, and these are generated both from antecedent states of mind and antecedent states of body, influenced by social and natural environment. The right of every generation should be determined, not by the ethics of any society, sect, or age, but by the broad, inexorable teachings of nature; nor should he forget that standards of morality are a freak of fashion, and that from wrongs begotten of necessity in the womb of progress has been brought forth right, and likewise right has engendered wrongs. He should remember that in the worst men there is much that is good, and in the best much that is bad; that constructed upon the present skeleton of human nature a perfect man would be a monster; nor should he forget how much the world owes its bad men. But alas! who of us are wholly free from the effects of early training and later social atmospheres! Who of us has not in some degree faith, hope, and charity! Who of us does not hug some ancestral tradition, or rock some pet theory! * * * * *