Such original historians, then, change the events, the deeds, and the
states of society with which they are conversant, into an object for the
conceptive faculty; the narratives they leave us cannot, therefore, be
very comprehensive in their range. Herodotus, Thucydides, Guicciardini,
may be taken as fair samples of the class in this respect. What is
present and living in their environment is their proper material. The
influences that have formed the writer are identical with those which
have molded the events that constitute the matter of his story. The
author's spirit and that of the actions he narrates are one and the
same. He describes scenes in which he himself has been an actor, or at
any rate an interested spectator. It is short periods of time,
individual shapes of persons and occurrences, single, unreflected
traits, of which he makes his picture. And his aim is nothing more than
the presentation to posterity of an image of events as clear as that
which he himself possessed in virtue of personal observation, 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 Cæsar'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