face facts
manfully, to discriminate between them skilfully, to draw
conclusions from them rigidly; unless they have learnt in all things
to look, not for what they would like to be true, but for what is
true, because God has done it, and it cannot be undone--then they
will be in danger of taking up only the books which suit their own
prejudices--and every one has his prejudices--and using them, not to
correct their own notions, but to corroborate and pamper them; to
confirm themselves in their first narrow guesses, instead of
enlarging those guesses into certainty. The son of a Tory turn will
read Tory books, the son of a Radical turn Radical books; and the
green spectacles of party and prejudice will be deepened in hue as
he reads on, instead of being thrown away for the clear white glass
of truth, which will show him reason in all honest sides, and good
in all honest men.

But, says the young man, I wish to be wide-minded and wide-hearted--
I study for that very purpose. I will be fair, I will be patient, I
will hear all sides ere I judge. And I doubt not that he speaks
honestly. But (I quote with all reverence) though the spirit be
willing, the flesh is weak. Studies which have to do with man's
history, man's thoughts, man's feelings, are too exciting, too
personal, often, alas, too tragical, to allow us to read them calmly
at first. The men and women of whom we read are so like ourselves
(for the human heart is the same in every age), that we
unconsciously begin to love or hate them in the first five minutes,
and read history as we do a novel, hurrying on to see when the
supposed hero and heroine get safely married, and the supposed
villain safely hanged, at the end of the chapter, having forgotten
all the while, in our haste, to ascertain which is the hero and
which is the villain. Mary Queen of Scots was "beautiful and
unfortunate"--what heart would not bleed for a beautiful woman in
trouble? Why stop to ask whether she brought it on herself? She
was seventeen years in prison. Why stop to ascertain what sort of a
prison it was? And as for her guilt, the famous Casket Letters
were, of course, a vile forgery. Impossible that they could be
true. Hoot down the cold-hearted, and disagreeable, and troublesome
man of facts, who will persist in his stupid attempt to disenchant
you, and repeat--But the Casket Letters were not a forgery, and we
can prove it, if you will but listen to the facts. Her prison,