Secondly, even in the exceptions and hesitations upon applying the rigour of this distinction, we may read the natural recognition (however latent or unconscious) of the rule itself. No man would think, for example, of placing a treatise on surveying, on mensuration, on geological stratifications, in any collection of his national literature. He would be lunatic to do so. A Birmingham or Glasgow Directory has an equal title to take its station in the national literature. But he will hesitate on the same question arising with regard to a history. Where upon examination the history turns out to be a mere chronicle, or register of events chronologically arranged, with no principle of combination pervading it, nor colouring from peculiar views of policy, nor sympathy with the noble and impassioned in human action, the decision will be universal and peremptory to cashier it from the literature. Yet this case, being one of degree, ranges through a large and doubtful gamut. A history like that of Froissart, or of Herodotus, where the subjective from the writer blends so powerfully with the gross objective, where the moral picturesque is so predominant, together with freshness of sensation which belongs to 'blissful infancy' in human life, or to a stage of society in correspondence to it, cannot suffer a demur of jealousy as to its privilege of entering the select fold of literature. But such advantages are of limited distribution. And, to say the truth, in its own nature neither history nor biography, unless treated with peculiar grace, and architecturally moulded, has any high pretension to rank as an organic limb of literature. The very noblest history, in much of its substance, is but by a special indulgence within the privilege of that classification. Biography stands on the same footing. Of the many memorials dedicated to the life of Milton, how few are entitled to take their station in the literature! And why? Not merely that they are disqualified by their defective execution, but often that they necessarily record what has become common property. FOOTNOTES: [29] Between the forms _modal_, _modish_, and _modern_, the difference is of that slight order which is constantly occurring between the Elizabethan age and our own. _Ish_, _ous_, _ful_, _some_, are continually interchanging; thus, _pitiful_ for _piteous_, _quarrelous_ for _quarrelsome_.