Histories are scarcely less ephemeral than books of science; and the object of the list we are advocating is not to provide an exhaustive catalogue, a task which in these days would overtax the capacity of half-a-dozen Dr. Johnsons, but to select those works which will give the best continuous narrative of the period under discussion, and represent the most recent scholarship; omitting those which have been absorbed or superseded. Mitford and Gillies have given place to Thirwall and Grote; and even the star of Hallam, outshining De Lolme, is beginning to wane before the searching light which, by the publication of State Papers and other archives, is being brought to bear on the History of England and of Modern Europe. But such materials, though ruthlessly relegating much of what we have hitherto regarded as the 'Pearls of History' to the category of 'Mock Pearls,' cannot immediately be made available for the ordinary student, or become absorbed into the popular histories of the day. We can ill spare from our list the names of those writers, who, from Livy to Lord Macaulay, have added a fascination to the study of history; though in their works most beautiful Mock Pearls abound. But the student should be warned against implicit reliance on their records. To Clarendon has been ascribed the honor of being the first Englishman who wrote History, as we regard it; his predecessors having been in the main mere chroniclers or annalists. Clarendon elaborated the picture of which these annalists had merely supplied the materials; and the eighteenth century saw the development of this new method in the brilliant triad of contemporaries, Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon. Our own age has witnessed a further advance in the school of philosophical historians, who, without aiming at any connected narrative of events, present to us the profound lessons which history teaches; pointing out the far-reaching causes which have influenced and are influencing events occurring in widely distant countries; causes and events which to the superficial observer seem totally disconnected. This philosophical category would form one of the most interesting, and in these days, when political empiricism shows a growing tendency to supplant statesmanlike research, not the least important portion of our historical list. If to this main stem of History there be added the due complement of branches and leaves--memoirs and biographies--the Plutarchs and Pepyses, the Walpoles and St. Simons, the Crokers and Grevilles of each generation--we shall have a tree of knowledge which would yield to none in point of interest and utility.