We have dwelt at some length on this part of the subject, first, because of its almost unlimited extent; and secondly, because, owing to this extent, there is such difficulty in making a genuine and trustworthy selection. There is, besides, an apparently constant antagonism in history between the qualities of strict accuracy and literary brilliancy. The two are not incompatible, but the striving after literary merit is as great a snare to the writer as its attainment by the writer is, in too many cases, to the student. Of voyages and travels, 'I would also have good store, especially the earlier, when the world was fresh and unhackneyed, and men saw things invisible to the modern eye: They are fast-sailing ships to waft away from present troubles to the Fortunate Islands.'[101] Grouped under each quarter of the globe, we should have selections of the works of those travellers, who, from Herodotus to Mr. Stanley, and from Marco Polo or Captain Cook down to Miss Bird, have made us who stay at home familiar with the remotest corners of the earth. Much of the romance of travel has of necessity perished in these matter-of-fact days; but as the writing of history has developed from a mere chronicle of events into a scientific and philosophical method, so the art of travelling is now assuming a political form under pressure of the gigantic problems which are exercising the mind of the civilized world; and a section of political travels, of which Mr. Froude and Baron von Huebner have recently given us examples, should not be omitted.