It is also the task of universal history so to trace the march of humanity as to display the relation which each part of it bears to the others; to fit each race and tribe and nation into the main narrative. To do this, three things are needed--a comprehensive knowledge, a power of selecting the salient and significant points, and a talent for arrangement. Of these three qualifications, the first is the least rare. Ours is an age of specialists; but the more a man buries himself in special studies, the more risk does he incur of losing his sense of the place which the object of his own study fills in the general scheme of things. The highly trained historian is generally able to draw from those who have worked in particular departments the data he needs; while the master of one single department may be unable to carry his vision over the whole horizon, and see each part of the landscape in its relations to the rest. In other words, a History of the World ought to be an account of the human family as an organic whole, showing how each race and state has affected other races or states, what each has brought into the common stock, and how the interaction among them has stimulated some, depressed or extinguished others, turned the main current this way or that. Even when the annals of one particular country are concerned, it needs no small measure of skill in expression as well as of constructive art to trace their connection with those of other countries. To take a familiar example, he who writes the history of England must have his eye always alive to what is passing in France on one side, and in Scotland on the other, not to speak of countries less closely connected with England, such as Germany and Spain. He must let the reader feel in what way the events that were happening in France and Scotland affected men’s minds, and through men’s minds affected the progress of events in England. Yet he cannot allow himself constantly to interrupt his English narrative in order to tell what was passing beyond the Channel or across the Tweed. [Illustration: VIVID SCENES OF ANCIENT LIFE DEPICTED BY CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS The walls of the tombs in Egypt form a great picture gallery of the vanished life of that country and are invaluable to the historian. This fragment from the British Museum shows how vividly the domestic figures were realised. ] [Sidenote: Unity of Universal History]