These remarks do not concern poetical literature alone, or chiefly.
Those habits of mind, of which I have spoken, ought to make us the
best _historians_. If Germany has a right to claim the whole realm
of the abstract, if Frenchmen understand the framework of society
better than we do, there is in the national dramas of Shakespeare an
historical secret, which neither the philosophy of the one nor the
acute observation of the other can discover. Yet these dramas are
almost the only satisfactory expression of that historical faculty
which I believe is latent in us. The zeal of our factions, a result
of our national activity, has made earnest history dishonest: our
English justice has fled to indifferent and sceptical writers for
the impartiality which it sought in vain elsewhere. This resource
has failed,--the indifferentism of Hume could not secure him against
his Scotch prejudices, or against gross unfairness when anything
disagreeably positive and vehement came in his way. Moreover, a
practical people demand movement and life, not mere judging and
balancing. For a time there was a reaction in favour of party
history, but it could not last long; already we are glad to seek in
Ranke or Michelet that which seems denied us at home. Much, no
doubt, may be gained from such sources; but I am convinced that
_this_ is not the produce which we are meant generally to import;
for this we may trust to well-directed native industry. The time
is, I hope, at hand, when those who are most in earnest will feel
that therefore they are most bound to be just--when they will
confess the exceeding wickedness of the desire to distort or
suppress a fact, or misrepresent a character--when they will ask as
solemnly to be delivered from the temptation to this, as to any
crime which is punished by law.

The clergy ought especially to lead the way in this reformation.