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it has no further aim than to present the annals of a country complete. Such compilations (among which may be mentioned the works of Livy, Diodorus Siculus, Johannes von Mueller's _History of Switzerland_) are, if well performed, highly meritorious. Among the best of the kind may be included such annalists as approach those of the first-class writers who give so vivid a transcript of events that the reader may well fancy himself listening to contemporaries and eye-witnesses. But it often happens that the individuality of tone which must characterize a writer belonging to a different culture is not modified in accordance with the periods which such a record must traverse. The spirit of the writer may be quite apart from that of the times of which he treats. Thus Livy puts into the mouths of the old Roman kings, consuls, and generals, such orations as would be delivered by an accomplished advocate of the Livian era, and which strikingly contrast with the genuine traditions of Roman antiquity--witness, for example, the fable of Menenius Agrippa. In the same way he gives us descriptions of battles as if he had been an actual spectator; but their salient points would serve well enough for battles in any period, for their distinctness contrasts, even in his treatment of chief points of interest, with the want of connection and the inconsistency that prevail elsewhere. The difference between such a compiler and an original historian may be best seen by comparing Polybius himself with the style in which Livy uses, expands, and abridges his annals in those periods of which Polybius' account has been preserved. Johannes von Mueller, in the endeavor to remain faithful in his portraiture to the times he describes, has given a stiff, formal, pedantic aspect to his history. We much prefer the narratives we find in old Tschudi; all is more naive and natural than when appearing in the garb of a fictitious and affected archaism. A history which aspires to traverse long periods of time, or to be universal, must indeed forego the attempt to give individual representations of the past as it actually existed. It must foreshorten its pictures by abstractions, and this includes not merely the omission of events and deeds, but whatever is involved in the fact that Thought is, after all, the most trenchant epitomist. A battle, a great victory, a siege no longer maintains its original proportions, but is put off with a mere allusion. When Livy
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