It is curious to notice how completely we have all fallen into the error which these writers expose. We speak naturally of “the elder days,” and we attribute to any period of the “olden times” an age which is in reality the sum of all the ages since. We seem to forget that antiquity, viewed as a period, is only old when we falsely add to it our own weight of years; and that antiquities, as objects, are only hoary when they have taken upon them the marks of their slow attainment, century by century, to the venerable age in which we now live. It is the Present that is old and hoary, not the Past. It is To-day that is burdened with the cares of advanced life; and, as compared with its heavy accountability, the bygone ages are light-hearted, irresponsible and unsubdued: for it is our own epoch, not theirs, that is encrusted with the corrosion of time. When we essay to study history we are accustomed to take the Present as our standpoint, and, looking back to some remote period, we find it old with the years we have crossed to reach it. But the historian should rather take the Past as his natural standpoint, and should forget To-day; for in dealing with bygone events it is surely obvious that we have no right to make the circumstances of our present existence our criterion. We must project ourselves into the youthful ages which we are studying, and must cast aside the cumbrous habits of thought which have been built up within us by the experiences of our ripe maturity. There is only one right way to examine the past years of mankind: we must look at them as, individually, we look at our own childhood, remembering the sensations and emotions of those times and contemplating life with those eyes. We cannot hope to comprehend the outlook of the Past unless we divest our minds of a large part of the world’s subsequent experience; for the Past is simply the nursery of the Present, and differs from it in just that degree in which a boy differs from a man. The regarding of former ages as being ancient and hoary has led the historian to introduce them to the reader in an unnecessarily sober and heavy manner. It has long been the habit to write history as though the story of the Past were a solemn subject calling for a grave and even melancholy treatment. The writing of an historical treatise is usually regarded as a legitimate opportunity for the display of the author’s turn for rhythmic prose or knowledge of punctuation and grammar. Rolling, dignified words, sentences which frown in their tremendousness, periods staid and smooth, are employed as the means whereby the picture of the Past, as he sees it, may be conveyed to the imagination of his readers. Macaulay even speaks of a certain subject as being “beneath the dignity of history.” The historian fails to see that it is not the giving out of the facts, but only their discovery, which requires ponderous study.