ow Polybius has no other merit than that of a faithful
narrator of facts; and how in the nineteenth century, from the practice
of distorting narrative in conformity with theory, "history proper is
disappearing." But in that essay, although the judgments are puerile,
the ideal at which the writer afterwards aimed is distinctly drawn, and
his own character is prefigured in the description of the author of a
history of England as it ought to be, who "gives to truth those
attractions which have been usurped by fiction," "intersperses the
details which are the charm of historical romances," and "reclaims those
materials which the novelist has appropriated."

Mr. Goldwin Smith, like Macaulay, has written on the study of history,
and he has been a keen critic of other historians before becoming one
himself. It is a bold thing for a man to bring theory so near to
execution, and, amidst dispute on his principles and resentment at his
criticism, to give an opportunity of testing his theories by his own
practice, and of applying his own canons to his performance. It reminds
us of the professor of Cologne, who wrote the best Latin poem of modern
times, as a model for his pupils; and of the author of an attack on
Dryden's _Virgil_, who is styled by Pope the "fairest of critics,"
"because," says Johnson, "he exhibited his own version to be compared
with that which he condemned." The work in which the professor of
history and critic of historians teaches by example is not unworthy of
his theory, whilst some of its defects may be explained by it.

The point which most closely connects Mr. Goldwin Smith's previous
writings with his _Irish History_ is his vindication of a moral code
against those who identify moral with physical laws, who consider the
outward regularity with which actions are done to be the inward reason
why they must be done, and who conceive that all laws are opposed to
freedom. In his opposition to this materialism, he goes in one respect
too far, in another not far enough.

On the one hand, whilst defending liberty and morality, he has not
sufficient perception of the spiritual element; and on the other, he
seems to fear that it would be a concession to his antagonists to dwell
on the constant laws by which nature asserts herself, and on the
regularity with which like causes produce like effects. Yet it is on the
observation of these laws that political, social, and economical science
rests; and it is by the knowle