It is useless to revert to similar circumstances in the past. The pallid shades of memory struggle in vain with the life and freedom of the present. Looked at in this light nothing can be shallower than the oft-repeated appeal to Greek and Roman examples during the French Revolution; nothing is more diverse than the genius of those nations and that of our times. Johannes von Müller, in his _Universal History_ as also in his _History of Switzerland_, had such moral aims in view. He designed to prepare a body of political doctrines for the instruction of princes, governments, and peoples (he formed a special collection of doctrines and reflections, frequently giving us in his correspondence the exact number of apothegms which he had compiled in a week); but he cannot assert that this part of his labor was among the best he accomplished. It is only a thorough, liberal, comprehensive view of historical relations (such for instance, as we find in Montesquieu's _L'Esprit des Lois_) that can give truth and interest to reflections of this order. One Reflective history, therefore, supersedes another. The materials are patent to every writer; each is prone to believe himself capable of arranging and manipulating them, and we may expect that each will insist upon his own spirit as that of the age in question. Disgusted by such reflective histories, readers have often returned with pleasure to narratives adopting no particular point of view--which certainly have their value, although, for the most part, they offer only material for history. We Germans are content with such; but the French, on the other hand, display great genius in reanimating bygone times and in bringing the past to bear upon the present condition of things.