CREDIBILITY OF HISTORY.--At the opposite pole from credulity is an unwarrantable historical skepticism. The story is told of Sir Walter Raleigh, that when he was a prisoner in the Tower, and was engaged in writing his _History of the World_, he heard the sounds of a fracas in the prison-yard. On inquiry of those who were concerned in it, and were on the spot, he found so many contradictions in their statements that he could not get at the truth. Whereupon, it occurred to him as a vain thing to undertake to describe what had occurred on the vast theater of the world, when he could not ascertain the truth about an event occurring within a bow-shot. The anecdote simply illustrates, however, the difficulty of getting at the exact truth respecting details,--a difficulty constantly exemplified in courts of justice. The fact of the conflict in the court of the Tower, the general cause, the parties engaged, the consequences,--as, for example, what punishment was inflicted,--were undisputed. The great facts which influence the course of history, it is not difficult to ascertain. Moreover, as against an extravagant skepticism, it may be said that history provides us with a vast amount of authentic information which contemporaries, and even individual actors, were not possessed of. This is through the bringing to light of documents from a great variety of sources, many of which were secret, or not open to the view of all the leaders in the transactions to which they refer. The private correspondence of the Protestant leaders,--Luther, Melanchthon, Cranmer, etc.,--the letters of Erasmus, the official reports of the Venetian ambassadors, the letters of William the Silent and of Philip II., put us in possession of much information, which at the time was a secret to most of the prominent participants in the events of the sixteenth century. The correspondence of Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, John Adams, Wolcott, Pickering, etc., introduces us into the secret counsels of the American political leaders of that day. Numerous facts conveyed from one to another under the seal of privacy, and not known to the others, are thus revealed to us. On the nature and value of tradition, a very valuable discussion is that of EWALD, _History of Israel_, vol. i. pp. 13-38; Sir G. C. LEWIS, _ Essays on the Credibility of Early Roman History_, in which Niebuhr's conclusions are criticised; A. Bisset, _Essays on Historical Truth_. On the sources of history, Art. by GAIRDNER in _The Contemporary Review_, vol. xxxviii.