Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/109

 only as a starting-point in independent research; a sort of first step in the study of original sources, which we hope may lead on to further and deeper investigation, but which, as it has to serve two pm-poses, can scarcely be likely to satisfy both; it is a specimen of minute study, and it is a specimen of original reading; but the object of the minute study is not the book, but the hero or the plot of it. It is, however, most encouraging to those who have the future of our History school at heart to know that the treatment of the special subject is always one of the best features of our examination; that in which the best side of the mind of each examinee is as a rule most distinctly shown. Regarded then as a study of a subject, rather than as a first step into the region of original authorities, this part of our work exemplifies one of two diametrically opposed methods of reading. And, whether there is or is not a science of History, and I believe that in the reasonable and intelligible sense of the word there is such a science, there is, I am sure, an art of writing History and an art of reading it; and the educational use of it is an exemplification of the art.

According to this, the reader or the writer may set before himself two opposite ideas; he may either wish to produce a historical statue or group of statuary, we may say, or he may wish to produce a historical picture. In the former case he has to look out his materials first, then to construct from the careful view of them an idea or model of the object which he desires to reproduce, and then to work out his idea. It is necessary for him to look at his subject all round, to finish it off completely at every point, and, while seeking for statuesque unity and perfection, to make truth and reality the first object. Everything that in the remotest way bears upon the history of the person or institution that he is describing, has its special value; original sources, the verdict of other historians, tradition, popular conceptions, poetic idealising; the place which his object has occupied in the development of historical life, the results which historical experience has produced or may have produced upon the object; every species of illustration derivable from archaeology, genealogy, law,