Page:Historical Lectures and Addresses.djvu/291

 bind national character together, and sets some of its elements against others. All are equally necessary; they must ultimately be recombined and reabsorbed; they do not really exist in the form in which they show themselves under the exigencies of conflict. Revolutionary epochs may be the most interesting, but they are not the most instructive. They may show us forcible characters, but these characters are rarely attractive. They may emphasise national characteristics, but they do not show them in the form in which they really work. It is true that a decisive choice will be made of the elements which are to be dominant in the new combination. So far as those elements were unknown and unsuspected before, the interest lies in discovering their origin and the source whence they drew their power. The picturesqueness of revolutionary periods is really dramatic and psychological, not strictly historical.

We come back, therefore, to the position that history is picturesque at those epochs when national tendencies are expressed in individual characters, and when the consciousness of this fact creates a literary study of those characters which is given in considerable detail. It is worth while to go a step further, and consider what may be learned from this fact. Perhaps this may best be done by reference to the history of our own country, with which we are most familiar.

English history is not very picturesque. It has not produced a large number of striking situations or of strongly marked characters. It is by no means rich in memoirs, and the most striking times have not called forth the most vivid description of their