een through no strange medium, but simply in their natural form.
But when, too, this language is employed in rare perfection, as in a
work of our own time,--I refer not merely to rounded periods and
euphony of cadence, but to the spirit of the narrative so much in
harmony with our present culture, and the tone of our minds, and to
the style which by every happy word excites our vivid sympathy;--when
we have before us a description of the events in the native language
with all its attractive traits and broad colouring, a description too
based on an old familiar acquaintance with the country and its
condition: it would be folly to pretend to rival such a work in its
own peculiar sphere. But the results of original study may lead us to
form a different conception of the events. And it is surely good that,
in epochs of such great importance for the history of all nations, we
should possess foreign and independent representations to compare with
those of home growth; in the latter are expressed sympathies and
antipathies as inherited by tradition and affected by the antagonism
of literary differences of opinion. Moreover there will be a
difference between these foreign representations. Frenchmen, as in one
famous instance, will hold more to the constitutional point of view,
and look for instruction or example in political science. The German
will labour (after investigation into original documents) to
comprehend each event as a political and religious whole, and at the
same time to view it in its universal historical relations.

I can in this case, as in others, add something new to what is already
known, and this to a larger extent as the work goes on.[1]

In no nation has so much documentary matter been collected for its
later history as in England. The leading families which have taken
part in public business, and the different parties which wish to
assert their views in the historical representation of the past as
well as in the affairs of the present, have done much for this object;
latterly the government also has set its hand to the work. Yet the
existing publications are far from sufficient. How incredibly
deficient our knowledge still is of even the most important
parliamentary transactions! In the rich collections of the Record
Office and of the British Museum I have sought and found much that was
unknown, and which I needed for obtaining an insight into events. The
labour spent on it is richly compensated by the