An artist in portraying a face or delineating a landscape, does not imprint upon his canvass, each line and wrinkle, each blade of grass or mossy stone, yet a spectator recognizes in the complete painting, those broad characteristics of truth which establish a limner's fidelity. So it is with the historian. Whilst seeking for accuracy in all his details, he aims, chiefly, at exactness in his ruling principles and general effect, but he leaves the minute inelegances and tasteless incidents to those whose critical fervor delights in detecting them. It is not alone in the detail of facts that the historian is liable to incur censure, especially when he writes a contemporaneous narrative. It is almost impossible to suppose that he will divest himself so completely of party feeling, as to compose an unprejudiced work. Some critics have even declared that a historian should possess neither religion nor country, and would thus force us to believe it utterly impossible to be impartial unless an author were an infidel or a cosmopolite. The age is so characterized by political rancor and so little by true statesmanship, that it is not surprising to hear such opinions even from experienced and patient scholars. Yet I have always thought that a writer who undertakes the task of delineating national annals in no sectarian spirit but with broad and Christian tolerance,--honestly seeking to do justice in politics and religion to all,--may so far separate himself from the strifes of the day as to pronounce opinions as honest, though perhaps not as learned, as those that issue from the bench. There is, too, a great advantage which should not escape our notice in recording contemporaneous history and fixing permanently the facts of the time as they occur. He who describes events or periods long since past, is forced to throw himself back, if possible, into the scenes of which he writes, whilst he remains free from sympathy with their factions and parties. But if a writer of the present day will place himself on the impartial ground of religious and political freedom, and make himself what Madame de Stael has so felicitously styled "contemporaneous posterity," I think he will be better able than those who come after us to narrate with vivid freshness the story of this sanguinary war. The impression of public feeling both in Mexico and the United States is still distinct in our recollection; the political motives influencing or controlling both the great parties in our country, have not yet ceased to operate; and the errors that may innocently creep into a narrative may be corrected by intelligent men who took part in the war as soldiers or civilians. A history thus dispassionately written, must, it seems to me, have the truth and value of a portrait taken from life, rather than of a sketch made from memory whose coloring lacks all the freshness of vitality. * * * * *