records of a state of things just expiring, anxious to observe
whether, in any point, there may be discerned an anticipation
of the great future, or whether all was blindness and
insensibility. In this respect, Comines' Memoirs are striking
from their perfect unconsciousness: the knell of the middle
ages had been already sounded, yet Comines has no other notions
than such as they had tended to foster; he describes their
events, their characters, their relations, as if they were to
continue for centuries. His remarks are such as the simplest
form of human affairs gives birth to; he laments the
instability of earthly fortune, as Homer notes our common
mortality, or in the tone of that beautiful dialogue between
Solon and Croesus, when the philosopher assured the king, that
to be rich was not necessarily to be happy. But, resembling
Herodotus in his simple morality, he is utterly unlike him in
another point; for whilst Herodotus speaks freely and honestly
of all men, without respect of persons, Philip de Comines
praises his master Louis the Eleventh as one of the best of
princes, although he witnessed not only the crimes of his life,
but the miserable fears and suspicions of his latter end, and
has even faithfully recorded them. In this respect Philip de
Comines is in no respect superior to Froissart, with whom the
crimes committed by his knights and great lords never interfere
with his general eulogies of them: the habit of deference and
respect was too strong to be broken, and the facts which he
himself relates to their discredit, appear to have produced on
his mind no impression."

We now enter upon a period which may be called the modern part of modern
history, the more complicated period, in contradistinction to the more
simple state of things which, up to this moment, has occupied the
student's attention. It is impossible to read, without deep regret, the
passage in which Dr Arnold speaks of his intention--"if life and health
be spared him, to enter into minute details; selecting some one country
as the principal subject of his enquiries, and illustrating the lessons
of history for the most part from its particular experience."

He proceeds, however, to the performance of the task immediately before
him. After stating that the great object, the [Greek: teleiotaton
telos], of history i