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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,
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