any one should read history except because he wishes to learn how things really went on. I do not know that any method of writing can make them always exciting. I hear people sometimes complain, "The newspapers are very dull to-day". I find they mean that there is no record of a great accident, or a horrible murder, or a political catastrophe. I think, however, they would change their remark and become very serious if, let us suppose, the newspapers chronicled a great railway accident on every day in one week. They would crave for a period of uneventfulness, and think that it was more permanently satisfying. We need a stable basis to rest upon before we can find comfortable pleasure in contemplating instability. Picturesqueness must have an element of restfulness. It is not to be found in constant excitement, but in clear cut and attractive presentation of events.
The possibility of such presentation, strange to say, becomes greater as the events are more remote. This is due to two causes: first, that we have made up our minds more clearly about what is important in the past; secondly, because the amount of materials which are available is limited. There is an immense difference between writing history previous to the sixteenth century and writing history after that date, owing to the nature of the material. The change which separates modern from mediæval times was made by the conscious growth of nations, and the consequent complexity of international relations. The difficulty of dealing with modern history is the impossibility of isolating events and their results.
