l tone, it has thus also been a powerful instrument
in producing the brilliant civilization of mighty empires.

A TEACHER OF HISTORY.--But apart from these its subjective benefits, it
has its highest and most practical utility as a TEACHER OF HISTORY.
Ballads, more powerful than laws, shouted forth from a nation's heart,
have been in part the achievers, and afterward the victorious hymns, of
its new-born freedom, and have been also used in after ages to reinspire
the people with the spirit of their ancestors. Immortal epics not only
present magnificent displays of heroism for imitation, but, like the Iliad
and Odyssey, still teach the theogony, national policy, and social history
of a people, after the Bema has long been silent, the temples in ruin, and
the groves prostrate under the axe of repeated conquests.

Satires have at once exhibited and scourged social faults and national
follies, and remained to after times as most essential materials for
history.

Indeed, it was a quaint but just assertion of Hare, in his "Guesses at
Truth," that in Greek history there is nothing truer than Herodotus except
Homer.

ITALY AND FRANCE.--Passing by the classic periods, which afford abundant
illustration of the position, it would be easy to exhibit the clear and
direct historic teachings in purely literary works, by a reference to the
literature of Italy and France. The history of the age of the Guelphs and
Ghibellines is clearly revealed in the vision of Dante: the times of Louis
XIV. are amply illustrated by the pulpit of Massillon, Bourdaloue, and
Bridaine, and by the drama of Corneille, Racine, and Moliere.

ENGLISH LITERATURE THE BEST ILLUSTRATION.--But in seeking for an
illustration of the position that literature is eminently a teacher and
interpreter of history, we are fortunate in finding none more striking
than that presented by English literature itself. All the great events of
English history find complete correspondent delineation in English
literature, so that, were the purely historical record lost, we should
have in the works of poetry, fiction, and the drama, correct portraitures
of the character, habits, manners and customs, political sentiments, and
modes and forms of religious belief among the English people; in a word,
the philosophy of English history.

In the works of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, Dryden, and Addison, are to
be found the men and women, kings, nobles, and commons, descriptions of