But that which makes history the richest of philosophies and the most genial pursuit of humanity is the spirit that is breathed into it by the thoughts and feelings of former generations, interpreted in actions and incidents that disclose the passions, motives, and ambition of men, and open to us a view of the actual life of our forefathers. When we can contemplate the people of a past age employed in their own occupations, observe their habits and manners, comprehend their policy and their methods of pursuing it, our imagination is quick to clothe them with the flesh and blood of human brotherhood and to bring them into full sympathy with our individual nature. History then becomes a world of living figures,--a theatre that presents to us a majestic drama, varied by alternate scenes of the grandest achievements and the most touching episodes of human existence. In the composing of this drama the author has need to seek his material in many a tangled thicket as well as in many an open field. Facts accidentally encountered, which singly have but little perceptible significance, are sometimes strangely discovered to illustrate incidents long obscured and incapable of explanation. They are like the lost links of a chain, which, being found, supply the means of giving cohesion and completeness to the heretofore useless fragments. The scholar's experience is full of these reunions of illustrative incidents gathered from regions far apart in space, and often in time. The historian's skill is challenged to its highest task in the effort to draw together those tissues of personal and local adventure which, at first without seeming or suspected dependence, prove, when brought into their proper relationship with each other, to be unerring exponents of events of highest concern. It is pleasant to fall upon the course of one of these currents of adventure,--to follow a solitary rivulet of tradition, such as by chance we now and then find modestly flowing along through the obscure coverts of time, and to be able to trace its progress to the confluence of other streams,--and finally to see it grow, by the aid of these tributaries, to the proportions of an ample river, which waters the domain of authentic history and bears upon its bosom a clear testimony to the life and character of a people.