northern nations.

Upon these hints the history of the republican aeras of ancient Greece
and modern Italy ought to be written. There are three kinds or stages of
historic narrative: 1. that of the annalist or chronicler, who deals
merely in facts and events arranged in order of time, having no
principle of selection, no plan of arrangement, and whose work properly
constitutes a supplement to the poetical writings of romance or heroic
legends: 2. that of the writer who takes his stand on some moral point,
and selects a series of events for the express purpose of illustrating
it, and in whose hands the narrative of the selected events is modified
by the principle of selection;--as Thucydides, whose object was to
describe the evils of democratic and aristocratic partizanships;--or
Polybius, whose design was to show the social benefits resulting from
the triumph and grandeur of Rome, in public institutions and military
discipline;--or Tacitus, whose secret aim was to exhibit the pressure
and corruptions of despotism;--in all which writers and others like
them, the ground-object of the historian colours with artificial lights
the facts which he relates: 3. and which in idea is the grandest-the
most truly, founded in philosophy--there is the Herodotean history,
which is not composed with reference to any particular causes, but
attempts to describe human nature itself on a great scale as a portion
of the drama of providence, the free will of man resisting the destiny
of events,--for the individuals often succeeding against it, but for the
race always yielding to it, and in the resistance itself invariably
affording means towards the completion of the ultimate result. Mitford's
history is a good and useful work; but in his zeal against democratic
government, Mitford forgot, or never saw, that ancient Greece was not,
nor ought ever to be considered, a permanent thing, but that it existed,
in the disposition of providence, as a proclaimer of ideal truths, and