This truth is expressed in the amazing development of diplomacy and in the vast multiplication of documents, which is to the historical craftsman the dividing line between two periods. The contemporary chronicler, who was previously the chief authority, sinks into the background. The historian has to wander patiently through endless byways, which apparently lead nowhere. It is comparatively easy to form a clear conception of a man's character when you have only the general outlines of his life and the record of his permanent achievements. It is much more difficult when you can follow his projects from day to day. The great mass of those projects came to nothing. Yet it is true, if we look to private life, that a man's character is more revealed by what he tries to do than by what he succeeds in doing. Indeed, it is not paradoxical to say that his abiding influence is expressed by his aspirations rather than by his achievements. His most fruitful heritage is, generally speaking, his temper, his attitude towards life, his method of facing its problems. The great question is, Did he heighten or did he lower the sense of duty of those amongst whom he lived and worked? The same mode of judgment seems to me to hold true in the large affairs in which history is concerned. Before we can judge a statesman rightly we must follow his aims and methods in detail. He could only command certain forces, the power of which was best known to himself. It is easy to prescribe an heroic policy at great crises, to lament apparent pusillanimity, and to arrange quietly in one's study, after a lapse of centuries, an ideal termination to political
