time went on, the atmosphere of accredited mendacity thickened,
until, in the Renaissance, the art of exposing falsehood dawned
upon keen Italian minds. It was then that History as we
understand it began to be understood, and the illustrious dynasty
of scholars arose to whom we still look both for method and
material. Unlike the dreaming prehistoric world, ours knows the
need and the duty to make itself master of the earlier times, and
to forfeit nothing of their wisdom or their warnings #15, and has
devoted its best energy and treasure to the sovereign purpose of
detecting error and vindicating entrusted truth #16.

In this epoch of full-grown history men have not acquiesced in
the given conditions of their lives. Taking little for granted
they have sought to know the ground they stand on, and the road
they travel, and the reason why. Over them, therefore, the
historian has obtained an increasing ascendancy #17. The law of
stability was overcome by the power of ideas, constantly varied
and rapidly renewed #18; ideas that give life and motion, that take
wing and traverse seas and frontiers, making it futile to pursue
the consecutive order of events in the seclusion of a separate
nationality #19. They compel us to share the existence of societies
wider than our own, to be familiar with distant and exotic types,
to hold our march upon the loftier summits, along the central
range, to live in the company of heroes, and saints, and men of
genius, that no single country could produce. We cannot afford
wantonly to lose sight of great men and memorable lives, and are
bound to store up objects for admiration as far as may be #20; for
the effect of implacable research is constantly to reduce their
number. No intellectual exercise, for instance, can be more
invigorating than to watch the working of the mind of Napoleon,