legendary outline, where Dionysius constructs a whole edifice of probable but utterly uncertified particulars. In the important task of sifting authorities Livy follows the plan of selecting the most ancient, and those who from their position had best access to facts. In complicated cases of divergence he trusts the majority, [29] the earliest, [30] or the most accredited, [31] particularly Fabius and Piso. [32] He does not analyse for us his method of arriving at a conclusion. "Erudition is for him a mine from which the historian should draw forth the pure gold, leaving the mud where he found it." Many of his conclusions are reached by a sort of instinct, which by practice divines truth, or rather verisimilitude, which is but too often its only available substitute. So far as enthusiasm serves (and without it criticism, though it may succeed in destroying, is helpless to construct), Livy penetrates to the spirit of ancient times. He says himself, in a very celebrated passage where he bewails the prevailing scepticism, [33] "Non sum nescius ab eadem neglegentia qua nihil portendere deos volgo nunc credunt neque nuntiari admodum ulla prodigia in publicum neque in annales referri. Ceterum et mihi vetustas res scribenti nescio quo pacto antiquus fit animus et quaedam religio tenet, quae illi prudentissimi viri publice suscipienda curarint, ea pro indignis habere quae in meos annales referam." This "antiquity of soul" is not criticism, but it is an important factor in it. In the history of the kings he is a poet. If we read the majestic sentence in which the end of Romulus is described, [34] we must admit that if the event is told at all this is the way in which it should be told. We meet, however, here and there, with genuine insertions from antiquity which spoil the beauty of the picture. Take, _e.g._, the law of treason, [35] terrible in its stern accents, "Duumviri perduellionem iudicent: si a duumviris provocarit, provocatione certato: si vincent, caput obnubito: infelici arbori reste suspendito: verberato vel intra pomoerium vel extra pomoerium," where, as the historian remarks, the law scarcely hints at the possibility of an acquittal. In the struggles of the young Republic one traces the risings of political passion, not of individuals as yet, but of parties in the state. After the Punic wars have begun individual features predominate, and what has been a rich canvass becomes a speaking portrait. Constitutional questions, in which Livy is singularly ill informed, are hinted at, [36] but generally in so cursory and unintelligent a way, that it needs a Niebuhr to elicit their meaning. And Livy is throughout led into fallacious views by his confusion of the mob (_faex Romuli_, as Cicero calls it) which represented the sovereign people in his day, with the sturdy and virtuous plebs, whose obstinate insistance on their right forms the leading thread of Roman constitutional development. Conformably