with! Even Thucydides hardly
ventures to lift the veil which separates the civilization of his own
age from that of an earlier period; he lifts it for a moment, then drops
the curtain and passes on. It is true indeed that Herodotus introduces
us to a world that is not Hellenic, and brings us into some sort of
relation with men whose habits and art and religion had a character of
their own; but then these nations were not as we, and not as men even of
our race could ever become. We never seem to be _in touch_ with Egypt or
Assyria, and when he prattles on about these nations it is less as a
historian than as an observant traveller that Herodotus delights and
allures. Xenophon's passing notices of the manners and education, of the
_feudalism_ and the social life of the Medes, are too brief to be
anything but tantalizing; but the neglect of Xenophon by professed
students is not creditable, however significant. Perhaps of all the
Greek writers Polybius was the man who had the truest conception of the
historian's vocation; perhaps, too, it was just because he was so much
before his age that his voluminous and ambitious work has come down to
us little more than a fragment. Because he was something better than a
compiler of annals, they who read history only to be amused found him
dull, and the moderns have not yet reversed the verdict which was passed
upon him. Who ever heard of a candidate for honours taking Polybius into
the schools?

It is from the Latin historians that we might have expected so much and
from whom we get so little. What do they tell us of ancient Spain--the
Spain that Sertorius pretended he was going to regenerate, and whose
civilization, literature, and national life he did so much to
extinguish? If it were not for what Aristotle has told us in the
_Politics_, what should we know of that mighty commercial Republic which
monopolized the carrying trade of the old world? It never seems to have
occurred to Livy that the political organization of Carthage could be
worth his notice. His business was to glorify Rome, and to tell how Rome
grew to greatness--grew by war and conquest and pillage, and the
ferocious might of her relentless soldiery. The 'Germania' of Tacitus
stands alone--unique in ancient literature; but what would we not give
for such a monograph upon the Britain which Caesar attempted to conquer,
or the Gaul which he plundered and devastated? The great captain's
famous missive might be inscribed