able theory of an immortal soul in
man, is the method of the poet, who makes his personages luminous from
within by an instinctive sympathy with human motives of action, and a
conception of the essential unity of character through every change of
fate.

Of late years men have begun to question the prescriptive right of this
"great gyant Asdryasdust, who has choked many men," to choke them also
because he had worked his wicked will on their fathers. It occurred to
an inquiring mind here and there that if the representation of men's
action and passion on the theatre could be made interesting, there was
no good reason why the great drama of history should be dull as a
miracle-play. Need philosophy teaching by example be so tiresome that
the pupils would rather burst in ignorance than go within earshot of
the pedagogue? Hence the historical romance, sometimes honestly called
so, and limited by custom in number of volumes; sometimes not called
so, and without any such limitation. This latter variety admits several
styles of treatment. Sometimes a special epoch is chosen, where one
heroic figure may serve as a centre round which events and subordinate
characters group themselves, with no more sacrifice of truth than is
absolutely demanded by artistic keeping. This may be called the epic
style, of which Carlyle is the acknowledged master. Sometimes a period
is selected, where the facts, by coloring and arrangement, may be made
to support the views of a party, and history becomes a political
pamphlet indefinitely prolonged. Here point is the one thing
needful,--to be attained at all hazards, whether by the turn of a
sentence or the twisting of a motive. Macaulay is preeminent in this
kind, and woe to the party or the man that comes between him and his
epigrammatic necessity! Again, there is the new light, or perhaps, more
properly, the forlorn-hope method, where the author accepts a brief
against the _advocatus diaboli_, and strives to win a reverse of
judgment, as Mr. Froude has done in the case of Henry VIII. The latest
fashion of all is the _a priori_, in which a certain dominant principle
is taken for granted, and everything is deduced from _x_, instead of
serving to prove what _x_ may really be. The weakness of this heroic
treatment, it seems to us, is in allowing too little to human nature as
an element in the problem. This would be a fine world, if facts would
only be as subservient to theory in real life as in the autho