Nor does the philosophical method of writing history please him any
better:

'Truly if History is Philosophy teaching by examples, the writer
fitted to compose history is hitherto an unknown man. Better were it
that mere earthly historians should lower such pretensions, more
suitable for omniscience than for human science, and aiming only at
some picture of the things acted, which picture itself will be a poor
approximation, leave the inscrutable purport of them an acknowledged
secret--or at most, in reverent faith, pause over the mysterious
vestiges of Him whose path is in the great deep of Time, whom History
indeed reveals, but only all History and in Eternity will clearly
reveal.'

This same transcendental way of looking at things is very noticeable
in the following view of Biography: 'For, as the highest gospel was a
Biography, so is the life of every good man still an indubitable
gospel, and preaches to the eye and heart and whole man, so that
devils even must believe and tremble, these gladdest tidings. Man is
heaven-born--not the thrall of circumstances, of necessity, but the
victorious subduer thereof.' These, then, being his views, what are we
to say of his works? His three principal historical works are, as
everyone knows, 'Cromwell,' 'The French Revolution,' and 'Frederick
the Great,' though there is a very considerable amount of other
historical writing scattered up and down his works. But what are we to
say of these three? Is he, by virtue of them, entitled to the rank and
influence of a great historian? What have we a right to demand of an
historian? First, surely, stern veracity, which implies not merely
knowledge but honesty. An historian stands in a fiduciary position
towards his readers, and if he withholds from them important facts