een
copied from book to book, inspires another to tell it for the tenth
time! Thus are the _sources of_ secret history unsuspected by the idler
and the superficial, among those masses of untouched manuscripts--that
subterraneous history!--which indeed may terrify the indolent, bewilder
the inexperienced, and confound the injudicious, if they have not
acquired the knowledge which not only decides on facts and opinions, but
on the authorities which have furnished them. Popular historians have
written to their readers; each with different views, but all alike form
the open documents of history; like feed advocates, they declaim, or
like special pleaders, they keep only on one side of their case: they
are seldom zealous to push on their cross-examination; for they come to
gain their cause, and not to hazard it!

Time will make the present age as obsolete as the last, for our sons
will cast a new light over the ambiguous scenes which distract their
fathers; they will know how some things happened for which we cannot
account; they will bear witness to how many characters we have mistaken;
they will be told many of those secrets which our contemporaries hide
from us; they will pause at the ends of our beginnings; they will read
the perfect story of man, which can never be told while it is
proceeding. All this is the possession of posterity, because they will
judge without our passions; and all this we ourselves have been enabled
to possess by the secret history _of the last two ages_![255]

FOOTNOTES:

[252] The large mass of important documents in the National
State-paper Office has recently been made available to the use of
the historic student, with the best results, and cannot fail to have
important influence on the future historic literature of the
country.

[253] See what I have said of "Suppressors and Dilapidators of
Manuscripts," vol. ii. p. 443.

[254] The "Conway Papers" remain unpublished. From what I have
already been favoured with the sight of, I may venture to predict
that our history may receive from them some important accession. The
reader may find a lively summary of the contents of these Papers in
Horace Walpole's account of his visit to Ragley, in his letter to
George Montague, 20th August, 1758. The Right Hon. John Wilson
Croker, with whom the Marquis of Hertford had placed the disposal of
the Conway Papers, is also in possession of the Throckm