of England"
and Bancroft's "History of the United States" are as good examples of
the highest type of historical writing as can be found.

There is a very noticeable difference between the methods of ancient and
modern historians. The former, it has been said, were _artistic_, and
the latter _sociological_. These terms, while aiming at the facts, are
neither accurate nor happy. The ancient historians, as Herodotus and
Thucydides, aimed at a pleasing narrative. To attain this end, neither
an exhaustive investigation of facts nor a conscientious abstention from
fiction was necessary. Hence we find the works of the one filled with
impossible events, and those of the other with orations confessedly
fictitious; but in both cases the introduction of legend and fiction has
imparted an interest that would otherwise be lacking in their works.

With modern historians, especially in the presence of the existing
dominant scientific spirit, it is different. The first requisite of
historical writing at the present day is absolute truth, as nearly as it
can be ascertained. The modern historian is not allowed to draw upon his
imagination for facts; he is held to a laborious and exhaustive
investigation of the sources of information. He writes out of abundant
stores of accurate information; and not content with the mere
chronological narration of facts, he seeks beneath them the principles
or laws that bind them together as a whole. Modern history, particularly
that of the last fifty years, has a breadth, accuracy, and depth, of
which the historians of Greece and Rome hardly dreamed.

+64. Biography.+ Biography is that department of history that gives the
facts and events of an individual life. It is at once an interesting
and important form of history. We have a natural desire to know the
lives and characters of the men who have in any way risen above their
fellows, and been associated with great social, literary, or political
movements. While great men are in large measure the creatures of mighty
movements, they at the same time give direction to historic development.
There is truth in Carlyle's idea that universal history "is at bottom
the history of the great men who have worked there."

There are three general types of biography, corresponding to the three
kinds of history. The first is _narrative_ biography, which is concerned
chiefly with an orderly statement of the leading facts--birth,
parentage, education, marriage, and ach