patches. Characters must be made The danger of an excessive desire for picturesqueness is that it leads to a purely external view of the course of affairs. The writer passes hastily from one strongly marked personality to another, from one striking event to another, and neglects all that lies between them. Yet personalities are only really interesting as they exhibit tendencies which are widely spread; and it is the strength of these tendencies which finds expression in the dominating character. In fact, the character itself is of no value for the purposes of history unless it be brought into relation with the general conditions of life and thought which produced it. This is the difference between history and fiction. For the purposes of fiction you have to grant the possibility of the character which is analyzed or displayed in action. For the purposes of history you have to understand the correspondency of the character with the conditions and circumstances of national life. It requires a skilful delineation of those conditions to give a character historical reality. He cannot be detached from his background. His whole interest lies in the fact that he really existed, and he must above all things be made possible. The reader must not be left bewildered and amazed, asking himself what sort of men lived on the earth in those days, and what were the interests and pursuits of the ordinary

life-like by remembering that after all
they were human beings, neither
wholly good nor wholly bad, but ani-
mated by motives analogous to those
which animate ourselves, and are com-
mon to man in all ages. An historian
ought to live with his characters as
much as possible, and form a concep-
tion of their temperament and ap-
pearance, so as to feel that he is
dealing, not with dummies, but with
real persons. This is not always the
method pursued. I remember being
told by a friend that he was in a great
library, and saw a popular writer anx-
iously searching the catalogue, with a
bundle of proofs under his arm. He
proffered his assistance, as he was
merely reading at large for a few
days, and would be glad to have an
object. "Oh," said the author with a
sigh, "I want to know the color of So-
and-so's hair, and I don't know where
to find out." My friend spent three
days in discovering this fact, an ob-
served, when the book appeared, that
the information was used in a descrip-
tion of the hero at a great crisis of his
fortunes: "He stood with his shock of
red hair and flashing eyes," etc. Now
in this case it is obvious that the judg-
ment on which the book was written
was formed first, and then picturesque
details were sought to deck it out. I
have sometimes meditated whether or
no the judgment would have been the
same if the writer had known at first
that his hero had red hair. As we are
affected in daily life by personal ap-
pearance as an index of character, su
we might well be affected by some
corresponding conception of tempera-
ment in great men of the past. His-
torical portraits are very valuable; the
knowledge how a man's appearance
impressed those who saw him is
equally valuable. No outburst of de-
scription makes a man real. This is
only possible by a sympathy between
the writer and his character, which
penetrates all that he says of him. A
large, yet consistent, representation is
the best form of picturesqueness
this important field.

in

man.

It is obvious, therefore, that all history cannot be made equally picturesque, and that it is useless to attempt to make it SO by deliberate omissions of all that is not picturesque. We must take human affairs as they come. After all, men did not live in the past for our amusement, but for our instruction. There were probably as many dull people in the past as there are in the present, and we may console ourselves with that reflection. I can see no reason why any one should read history except that he wishes to learn how things really went on. I do not know that any method of writing can make them always excit

ing. I hear people sometimes com- cult when you can follow his projects plain, "The newspapers are very dull to-day." I find they mean that there is no record of a great accident, or a horrible murder, or a political catastrophe. I think, however, they would change their remark and become very serious if, let us suppose, the news papers chronicled a great railway accident on every day in one week. They would crave for a period of uneventfulness, and think that it more permanently satisfying. need a stable basis to rest upon before we can find comfortable pleasure in contemplating instability. Picturesqueness must have an element of restfulness. It is not to be found in constant excitement, but in clear-cut and attractive presentation of events.

was

We

The possibility of such presentation, strange to say, becomes greater as the events are more remote. This is due to two causes: first, that we have made up our minds more clearly about what is important in the past; but, secondly, because the amount of materials which are available is limited. There is an immense difference between writing history previous to the sixteenth century and writing history after that date, owing to the nature of the material. The change which separates modern from mediæval times was made by the conscious growth of nations, and the consequent complexity of international relations. The difficulty of dealing with modern history is the impossibility of isolating events and their results. This truth is expressed in the amazing development of diplomacy and the vast multiplication of documents, which is to the historical craftsman the dividing line between two periods. The contemporary chronicler, who was previously the chief authority, sinks into the background. The historian has to wander patiently through endless byways, which lead apparently nowhere. It is comparatively easy to form a clear conception of a man's character when you have only the general outlines of his life and the record of his permanent achievements. It is much more diffi

from day to day. The great mass of those projects came to nothing. Yet it is true, if we look to private life, that a man's character is more revealed by what he tries to do than by what he succeeds in doing. Indeed, it is not paradoxical to say that his abiding influence is expressed by his aspirations rather than by his achievements. His most fruitful heritage is, generally speaking, his temper, his attitude towards life, his method of facing its problems. The great question is, Did he heighten or did he lower the sense of duty of those amongst whom he lived and worked? The same mode of judgment seems to me to hold true in the large affairs with which history is concerned. Before we can judge a statesman rightly we must follow his aims and methods in detail. He could only command certain forces, the power of which was best known to himself. It is easy to prescribe an heroic policy at great crises, to lament apparent pusillanimity, and to arrange quietly in one's study, after a lapse of centuries, an ideal termination to political difficulties. But we are all of us conscious of the difference between what we would do and what we can do. Everybody who sits on a committee comes away feeling that he could have managed its business better by himself. But the use even of a committee is to show you what available resources a particular line of action can command; and you generally depart with a conviction that it is only the second-best policy which has any chance of immediate success. Statesmen in the past suffered under the same limitations. The possession of supreme power by rulers is only apparent. Somehow or other they had to discover what the nation was likely to do, and more than that they could not venture to undertake. Improvements in the mechanism of government are of use as they enable statesmen to gauge more accurately the forces on which they can rely. There is one lesson that comes from reading diplomatic records: it is

tion.

find

that rulers were always trying to make to something in which he can the best of a bad business. Parlia- fuller scope for his power of descripmentary obstruction is only a condensed form of what had always to be reckoned with. The outward expression of tendencies has changed, rather than the tendencies themselves.

It is very difficult to clothe with any appearance of interest abortive at tempts which came to nothing, which were put forward in ambiguous language, and were often cloaks to some further purpose behind. Yet, as a matter of fact, these constituted the main activity of many statesmen, and if we leave them untraced or unmentioned, we are missing the point of their laborious lives. There is no more widespread delusion than that a man in a great position gets his own way. He is envied by the ignorant and thoughtless for his supposed power, for his freedom from those petty inconveniences of which they themselves are keenly conscious. The opportunity to do what one wills-this is assumed to be the privilege of those who direct affairs. One of the great lessons of history is to show the bandage, as well as the responsibility, of power. The trials and disappointments of the great deserve recognition-not only their failures in great undertakings, the dramatic downfall of over-lofty schemes, but the small difficulties of their daily business, the imperious limitations by which they were constantly hampered. This has a meaning of direct importance to us all; but it is hard to make the troubles of daily life picturesque. The writer of fiction moves us by the stirring adventures of his hero and heroine in overcoming difficulties which stood in the way of their marriage. Then he leaves them to settle down to humdrum life as best they can. They are no longer interesting, but become as ignoble and commonplace as their parents were at the beginning of the book. The historian cannot treat his personages in the same way. He has to face the difficulty of extracting some interest from their average occupations. He is tempted to shirk it, and to hurry on

It is, therefore, this diplomatic record which goes far to injure the picturesqueness of history. It constantly reveals limitations which could not be overcome. It shows us the hero in his shirt-sleeves, laboring mostly in vain, and it enables us to see only too clearly his inevitable defects. But if we look a little longer we see that it enlarges his personality, and exhibits him as the representative of his nation. This really sets him on a higher level, and gives him a greater dignity. He is bearing the burden of his country, and is fettered by her deficiencies. There are many things which might be done if he had the means to do them. He can only reckon on so much, and must make it go as far as he can. His projects are tentative, and he is often obliged to withdraw from much for want of a little. He is not really his own master, but serves a public which imperfectly understands its own position, and grudges everything it gives. Whatever else picturesqueness may attempt to do, it must not seek to abolish the pathos of humble industry. I have been speaking generally about picturesque ways of writing history, in the ordinary acceptation of the term. Let me attempt to go a little farther, and try to discover in what the picturesqueness of history consists. It is obvious that, if it lies in a series of vivid pictures of events and striking presentations of character, the historian cannot rival the writer of fiction, and historical novels are the proper mode of expressing picturesque presentation. Some historians have felt the need of a more imaginative treatment than their subject properly allowed, and have supplemented their serious histories by historical novels. But the point which I wish to consider is the sense in which history can be made picturesque, and the reason why some periods of history are more capable of picturesque treatment than others.

Now the term picturesque itself sug

gests artistic handling; and it is obvi- actual surroundings. I doubt if our interest in Italian history would be so strong were it not for the fact that its records still remain and have their message for us. Italian princes would be forgotten had they not been patrons of artists and architects, whose works speak to us by their beauty and their grandeur. We wish to know what was the view of life which gave these creations such dignity and grace, who were the men for whom such stately palaces were built, what was the conception of human character and its possibilities which prevailed in the community from which they sprung. The men themselves are only interesting because they were conspicuous and intelligible instances of tendencies which we wish to see expressed a action, that we may more clearly understand their meaning as expressed in the abstract forms of architecture and

ous that in art as much depends on the selection of the subject as on the mode of treating it. An historian is bound by his subject, and cannot make it picturesque if it is not so in reality. The great periods of picturesqueness are those in which personality is most powerful. This constitutes to many minds the charm of the history of Italy, especially in the fifteenth century. There was then a copious supply of determined and adventurous characters, whose main object was to express themselves fully. Outward circumstances gave them a favorable opportunity. They rose by their own dexterity, and aimed at artistic completeness in all their achievements. They are attractive by their freedom from conventional restraints, by their unhesitating self-confidence, and by the magnificence of their aims. The same spirit which animated Italy art. Our interest is not primarily in passed on in a somewhat modified form to the rest of Europe in the sixteenth century, and became domesticated in France. From that time onward we may say that French history is the most picturesque.

Yet it is worth observing that a mere expression of character, unfettered by ordinary restraints, does not of itself satisfy our craving for picturesqueness. In fact, the most purely personal history is that of the later Roman Empire, of the Byzantine Empire, and of its successor, the Russian Empire. For striking scenes and dra matic events these histories surpass any others. Caligula and Nero. Leo the Isaurian and Irene, Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great, outstrip in wilfulness and daring anything that Italy or France ever produced. Yet they seem to us remote and monstrous; they do not touch us with any pathy; they belong to a range of ideas which is not our own; they represent characteristics of power with which we are not familiar. It is not enough that scenes should be striking, or characters strongly marked. Scenes and characters alike must stand in some definite relation to ourselves and our

sym

ideas

the men themselves, or their doings,
but in the significance of the
which lay behind them. The same
thing is true of the picturesqueness of
French history. We are attracted by
the process which produced that men-
tal alertness and precision which char-
acterize the French mind, that power
of organizing life so as to get the most
out of it, which is still the peculiar
merit of the French people.

This leads me to another point. A bald record of events or a faint description of a character by a contemporary does not suffice for historical picturesqueness. Things may loom large, and we may see their importance, but we cannot hope to reproduce them by mere exercise of imagination. Picturesqueness must come from adequate materials and every touch must be real. Imagination, after all, is only an arrangement of experience. You cannot really create; you are only borrowing and adjusting odds and ends according to some dominant conception. It is useless in history to read a man about whom little is known into the likeness of another about whom you may know much. It is useless to reproduce an obscure period in the

terms of a period with which you are of character. This is obvious in the more familiar. Where we do not drama. It is impossible to represent know we cannot safely invent. Now an ordinary man engaged in his or picturesqueness in history must de- nary pursuits. To show what sort of pend on the material available for inti- man he is, it is necessary to place him mate knowledge. It is only at times in an extraordinary and unexpected when men were keenly interested in position; then all his hidden strength life and character that such records or weakness comes to light. A man were produced. We cannot make the can only be defined by his limitations; life of Byzantium live again, for the and these are only obvious when he records are formal and official. Out- has to act on his own initiative, robbed side accounts of magnificence suggest of his ordinary props, and forced to little; we need the touch of intimacy draw upon his own intellectual and to give life. In short, picturesqueness moral resources. Hence it comes that is only possible in dealing with pe- we feel the attraction of troublous riods when literature was vigorous times in history, and regard them as and contemporary memoirs were plenti- the most picturesque. The Great Reful. bellion and the French Revolution have furnished endless motives to dramatists, novelists, and painters, be cause they suggest possibilities striking contrasts, and afford available situations. The human interest is then most intense, and our sympathies are most easily awakened.

I should not like to say whether the demand created the supply, or the supply created the demand. It is enough that men were interested in themselves and in one another, and have left us the result of their interest. That interest arose from a belief in the importance of what was happening, and a power of tracing it to individual action.

Hence prominent individuals were closely scanned, their motives were analyzed, and the influences which weighed with them were carefully observed. In some cases their importance was entirely due to their position. But any now they were representatives of their times, of the habits, manners, and ideas which were current. The picture which we wish to have in our Own minds is not merely that of the man, or of the events in which he took part, but of the life and the society which lay behind him.

The picturesqueness of history, therefore, is largely due to memoirs; and the countries and epochs which have produced them are especially pic turesque. Now it is great crises, periods of disruption, great emergencies, which as a rule impress contemporaries and furnish matter for close observation. The production of crises is, of course, not the highest sign of human intelligence. In fact, a crisis is due to blundering and incapacity. But when a crisis occurs it is a revelation

of

But though such times are the best for displaying individual character, it may be doubted if they are the best for displaying national life and national character. Indeed, they exaggerate differing tendencies which, in an ordinary way, work harmoniously together, and force them into violent opposition. It is true that the tendencies were there, that they rested upon certain ideas, and made for certain ends. But in the exigencies of a struggle they assumed undue proportions and became one-sided through the apparent necessity of denying any right of existence to the ideas opposed to them. In short, national life depends on the blending of various elements, and the co-operation on a large scale of efforts which, regarded on a small scale, seem to be diametrically opposed. Periods of revolution destroy this process, and make the apparent opposition an absolute one for a time, so that the parallel between the individual and the nation fails in tuis point. A crisis in the life of the individual reveals his true character, because it compels him to gather together the various elements of which that