on, or
lifelike descriptions. Reflections are none of his business, for he
lives in the spirit of his subject; he has not attained an elevation
above it. If, as in Caesar's case, he belongs to the exalted rank of
generals or statesmen, it is the prosecution of his own aims that
constitutes the history.

Such speeches as we find in Thucydides, for example, of which we can
positively assert that they are not _bona fide_ reports, would seem to
make against our statement that a historian of his class presents us no
reflected picture, that persons and people appear in his works in
_propria persona_ ... Granted that such orations as those of
Pericles--that most profoundly accomplished, genuine, noble
statesman--were elaborated by Thucydides, it must yet be maintained that
they were not foreign to the character of the speaker. In the orations
in question, these men proclaim the maxims adopted by their countrymen
and formative of their own character; they record their views of their
political relations and of their moral and spiritual nature, and publish
the principles of their designs and conduct. What the historian puts
into their mouths is no supposititious system of ideas, but an
uncorrupted transcript of their intellectual and moral habitudes.

Of these historians whom we must make thoroughly our own, with whom we
must linger long if we would live with their respective nations and
enter deeply into their spirit--of these historians to whose pages we
may turn, not for the purposes of erudition merely, but with a view to
deep and genuine enjoyment, there are fewer than might be imagined.
Herodotus, the Father, namely the Founder, of History, and Thucydides
have been already mentioned. Xenophon's _Retreat of the Ten Thousand_ is
a work equally original. Caesar's _Commentaries_ are the simple
masterpiece of a mighty spirit; among the ancients these annalists were
necessarily great captains and statesmen. In the Middle Ages, if we
except the bishops, who were placed in the very centre of the political
world, the monks monopolize this category as naive chroniclers who were
as decidedly isolated from active life as those elder annalists had been
connected with it. In modern times the relations are entirely altered.
Our culture is essentially comprehensive, and immediately changes all
events into historical representations. Belonging to the class in
question, we have vivid, simple, clear narrations--especially of
military transa