"And do you think Mr. Macaulay as accurate as he is full of genius and eloquence?" "If he be not," said Harrington, laughing, "I am afraid there are very few of us deeply versed enough in history to detect his delinquencies, or even to say whether they have been committed. There may be, for aught I know, some cases (of infinite importance of course) in which he has represented an event as having taken place on the 20th of Dec. 1693; whereas it took place on the 3d Jan. 1694; or he may have said that Sir Thomas Nobody was the son of another Sir Thomas Nobody, whereas two or three antiquarians can incontestably prove that he was the son of Sir John Nobody, and nephew of the above. To me, I confess, he appears distinguished scarcely more by the splendor of his imagination than by the opulence of his knowledge, and the imperial command which he possesses over it. But, in truth, the accuracy or otherwise of history, when it is at all remote, is a matter in which I feel less interest than I once did. I read, indeed, Mr. Macaulay with perpetual renewal of wonder and delight. But though I believe that his vivid pictures are the result, of a faithful use of his materials, yet, if I must confess the full extent of my scepticism, his work, and every other work which involves a reference to events which transpired only a century or two ago, is poisoned as history by the suspicion that to ascertain the truth is impossible. I know it must be so, if the principles of your favorite Strauss are to be received; and yet it seems so absurd, that I am sometimes inclined, on that account alone, to laugh at Strauss's criticisms, just as David Hume did at his own speculative doubts when he got into society and sat down to backgammon with a friend. At other times, as I say, the whole field of historic investigation seems more or less the territory of scepticism." "I know not," said the other, "how you can justify any such general scepticism from any thing that Strauss has written."