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ing the ground plan, as well as the fatigue of distracting pictures. When one description can, by slight curtailments or additions, be made to answer throughout, to depart from it is a waste of mental force.

(2.) Clear intimation should be given of any change of scene, or of the introduction or the disappearance of an important agent.

This essential of perspicuous narrative is often disregarded, especially by the poets; they being unable to give such intimations in poetic diction. In the Faerie Queen, personages appear and disappear without warning; and the whole action is rendered hazy by the uncertainty of the groundwork. Stage directions would be invaluable in these cases.

19. I. The first principle of Narrative is to follow the Order of Events. This implies placing the events before us as we should have witnessed them.

It is also the order of dependence, or cause and effect, a relationship commonly made prominent in narrative.

A historian is required, not merely to relate events, but to explain or account for them. In other words, he has to show how they conform to the ordinary laws of the world. His personages must be seen to be actuated by the usual motives of mankind; he must find, in the recognized modes of working of things, adequate causes for whatever has happened.

Such explanatory accompaniments are said to make a history philosophical. There is, however, no history that is not philosophical in some degree. The difference between one historian and another has regard to the accuracy and penetration that they severally display in accounting for the transactions narrated by them.

20. To assign the date of every transaction is to give it a definite place, and to institute one vital bond of connection between it and other transactions.

Chronology is the skeleton, the chart, of history. It is what

latitude and longitude are to geography. Every event is by this means set in a definite position towards every other; any two events are either contemporary or successive, with a fixed interval between. Hence there is no rule of historical composition more imperative than the easily obeyed one of giving dates. It is hard to comprehend Gibbon's motives in not supplying a marginal chronology.

To fix upon a year and assign the things transacting therein, throughout all the countries historically known, is a favorite theme with Macaulay, and would constitute a good exercise for pupils studying history. Among countries having relations with each other-in war, alliance, trade, &c.-these contemporaneous events will often be found connected; and every sort of connection both imparts interest and aids memory.

21. For the better explanation of events, a backward reference may be necessary.

Whatever period an historian selects, he starts with a certain condition of things, which he is desirous to account for. He therefore gives a short summary of previous transactions, confining himself to such as bear on this special end.

Macaulay's History of James II. is prefaced by a rapid survey of the History of England. An historian of the battle of Waterloo would have to prepare his readers by a summary like the following :—

The great political event of the end of the last century, the French Revolution of 1789, expelled the dynasty that had ruled France for many ages, and established a democratic government, which, after a series of vicissitudes, marked by intense party feelings, gave way to the usurpation of Napoleon, who had distinguished himself as a victorious general in the wars of the Republic. His great military career, begun in Italy, extended over Europe, ending in the subjugation of the Spanish Peninsula, the Low Countries, and a great part of Germany. The British power, co-operating with the subjugated nations, through that memorable struggle known as the Peninsular War, at last succeeded in wresting from him his conquests, and in making him a prisoner and an exile in the island of Elba. He, however, contrived to escape from his confinement, to make good a landing in France, and, by the attraction of his name, to muster the military power of the country, and

again to threaten the nations that he had previously conquered. The rest of Europe prepared to resist him. An army composed of English, Germans, Belgians, and Dutch, assembled and marched by the Low Countries to the French frontier.

22. It is sometimes best to commence by describing a recent state of things more familiar to the persons addressed, and then to point out by what previous steps that state was arrived at.

In this case also, the inversion of the order of time has a view to the explanation of the event. It corresponds to a rule in teaching science, requiring us, before propounding an explanation or solution, to state clearly the point to be explained, or the problem to be solved.

There could not be a better preparation for studying the history of Great Britain than a full acquaintance with all its existing institutions. Knowing exactly the state of things to be accounted for, we should be more alive to the flow of events that contributed to produce it.

This method is not unsuited to the case of nations that have ceased to exist. A full account of the Roman world in the age of Augustus might, not improperly, precede the early history of Rome.

In Geology, this plan is followed with advantage. It may be seen exemplified in Lyell's Elements, and in his Antiquity of Man.

23. II. It is necessary to provide for the narration of Concurring Streams of Events.

There are several distinct modes of concurrence.

(1.) A principal action, with subordinates; as in a campaign, in the history of a single country or of a collective interest, and in any complex proceeding where detached operations are carried on. In Romance and the Drama, subordinate events are essential to the plot.

Here the art consists in upholding the prominence of the main stream of the narrative. In relating the subordinate transactions, the historian has to make apparent their subordination.

The forms of language announcing the transition from the principal current to the minor streams, and back again, should be explicit. The separation into distinct chapters contributes to the same end.

24. In imitation of the descriptive art, it is possible to give a comprehensive scheme, or plan, of the events, principal and subsidiary.

Many narratives may be brought under the similitude of the tree. Not merely the genealogy of families, but the progress of colonization, the diffusion of races, and the spread of languages, are adapted to this representation.

Carlyle draws upon his usual boldness of metaphor to supply these comprehensive narrative plans. We quote a few specimens :-The Royalist army at Worcester, pressed by Cromwell, is a lion in the folds of a boa; the confused politics of Poland in the end of the 17th century, he styles the Polish Donnybrook fair; George II., distracted by opposite alliances, is the Hanoverian white horse between seven sieves of beans.

Helps, aware of the peculiarly involved nature of the history of American discovery by the Spaniards, tries various devices for grappling with it. He remarks, on the occasion of a passing reference to the third voyage of Columbus :

"This voyage will have, hereafter, to be carefully recounted. I am so convinced, however, that the best chance for the reader to remember any of the entangled history of the discovery and settlement of Spanish America is to have it told to him according to place, and not to date, that I entirely postpone all farther allusion to Columbus, until that part of the coast which he discovered becomes important in the general narrative."

25. (2.) Concurring streams of nearly equal importance; as in the History of Greece.

In this instance, we may be said to have a plurality of histories, embraced in the same work. In Grecian history, for example, Athens, Sparta, Argos, Thebes, Corinth, &c., the Asiatic, the Italian, and the Sicilian Greeks,-pursue for the most part their independent career, broken only by their mutual conflicts.

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The historian of collective Greece has to execute his task by a series of distinct narratives.

26. (3.) The case of two or more contending parties. Hostile operations introduce a new element to perplex and complicate the narrative.

In depicting warfare, or any species of contest, the historian narrates sometimes from one side, and sometimes from the other. Now it is essential to a clear understanding of the operations that the change of position should be open and declared. Actual conflict involves both parties; and there is great danger of bringing about confusion in the picture, by passing in a stealthy manner between the two sides. An eye-witness, like Kinglake at the Alma, retains his point of view throughout; a compiler from various witnesses differently stationed is liable to those furtive transitions of scene. The most obvious course seems to be to describe the preparations first on one side and then on the other; and, during the shock of battle, to adhere to one point of view. This is the usual method of Carlyle. In describing the battle of Prag, he gives a full account of the preparations on the part of the Austrians, and then makes the transition thus:-" We will now return to Friedrich; and will stay on his side through the terrible action that is coming."

27. (4.) The plurality of departments in the same historical unity.

A nation plays many parts at one time. Its Foreign relations, which are its wars, diplomacy, and colonization, figure in the history of the world. Even when they do not absorb the historian's attention, they are usually recounted apart. The Internal or Domestic history is itself open to subdivision. The struggles to determine the Government, or the Political Constitution, rank first in prominence. There may be other questions that stir the whole life of the nation, and afford an exciting theme of narrative; such are the Revolutions in Religion. After these, come the subjects of quieter interest; Administrative improvements, and the progress of Literature, Art, and Sci