[90:1] This has for the first time been clearly put by Duruy in his _History of Rome_. Our irresponsible and final Houses of Parliament, whose acts may annul any law, are a very dangerous modern analogy. CHAPTER V. THE GREAT HISTORIANS. § 39. I now pass on to the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, and their treatment by ancient and modern critics. [Sidenote: Herodotus and Thucydides.] [Sidenote: Herodotus superior in subject.] It is our peculiar good fortune to have these two wars narrated respectively by the two greatest historians that Greece produced,--Herodotus and Thucydides. Unfortunately, perhaps, after the manner of most historians, they have made wars their chief subject; but this criticism applies less to Herodotus, who in leading up to his great climax has given us so many delightful digressions on foreign lands and their earlier history, that his book is rather a general account of the civilized world in the sixth century, with passages from older history, than a mere chronicle of the great war. Nor does he disdain to tell us piquant anecdotes and unauthorized gossip,--all giving us pictures of his own mind and time, if not an accurate record of older history. Making, therefore, every allowance for the often uncritical, though always honest[92:1], view he took of men and affairs, there can be no doubt that the very greatness of his subject puts him far above Thucydides, whose mighty genius was unfortunately confined to a tedious and generally uninteresting conflict, consisting of yearly raids, military promenades, very small battles, and only one large and tragic expedition, throughout the whole course of its five-and-twenty years. [Sidenote: Narrow scope of Thucydides.] [Sidenote: His deliberate omissions,]