In some respects Mr. Parton's biography reminds us of Macaulay's History. Both have been credited with the same qualities, both charged with the same defects. Both are indefatigable in collecting material from all quarters,--from other histories and biographies, memoirs, letters, newspapers, broadsides, and personal communications gathered in many out-of-the-way localities. Both have the power of discarding insignificant details and retaining what is suggestive and picturesque. Both, therefore, have the same supreme merit of being interesting. Both have strong prejudices, take sides earnestly, forget that they are narrators, and begin to plead as attorneys and advocates. Both have been accused, rightly or wrongly, of grave inaccuracies. But their defects will not prevent them from holding their place as teachers of the English-speaking public. English and American readers will long continue to think of Marlborough as Macaulay represents him; of Jackson and Jefferson as Parton describes them. Such Rembrandt-like portraits fix the attention by their strange chiaro-oscuro. They may not be like nature, but they take the place of nature. The most remarkable instance of this kind is the representation of Tiberius by Tacitus, which has caused mankind, until very recently, to consider Tiberius a monster of licentiousness and cruelty, in spite of the almost self-evident absurdity and self-contradiction of this assumption.[36] Limners with such a terrible power of portraiture should be very careful how they use it, and not abuse the faculty in the interest of their prejudices.