each labors to invent a purely individual point of view; instead of
writing history, we are always beating our brains to discover how
history ought to be written.

This first kind of Reflective history is most nearly akin to the
preceding, when 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 Müller'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 Müller, in the
endeavor to remain faithful in his portraiture to the times he