to represent everything to their minds under the form of images. Hence the poetry of every nation still in infancy has, and can have, nothing else for its object than the mythology; and, from the difference which exists in the nature of the ingredients composing that mythology, spring, at this early period, the various kinds of poetry, the lyric, the didactic, the epic. The last of these, inasmuch as it contains the historic songs and the epopee, claims the especial attention of the historian.

The second source for history, incomparably more copious and important than the first, is that furnished by written monuments of every kind. Following the comparative dates at which they were adopted, these monuments may be divided into three classes; 1st, Inscriptions on public monuments, to which head are referred the coins of later times; 2d, Chronological enumeration of events, under the form of annals and chronicles; 3d, Distinct philosophical works on history.

The most ancient written memorials, indisputably, are the inscriptions on public monuments erected to preserve the memory of certain events; whether for that purpose a mere stone was set upright, or even the bare rock itself engraved. As soon as the national taste had obtained, from local circumstances, a decided consistency, and architecture had sprung up and expanded, art shaped these monuments into columns, obelisks, pyramids. The very object proposed in their erection-the commemoration of certain events-must necessarily have led to the practice of carving on them inscriptions, in which those facts were recorded. Of such a nature are, no doubt, the oldest monuments, and more particularly those in Egypt: the use of this kind of memorial continued to be much more frequent among the later nations, the Greeks and Romans especially, than it is among the moderns; yet of the vast quantity of inscriptions preserved to this day, but a comparatively small number is, in an historical point of view, of any importance.

Coins likewise may be regarded as one of the sources of ancient history, inasmuch as they afford us information, especially with respect to genealogy and chronology; by the assistance of which, events known from other authorities may be better arranged and co-ordinated. The importance of coins, therefore, becomes most sensible in these portions of history where our information, in consequence of the loss of

the works of the original historians, is reduced to a few insulated facts and fragments.

The second main division of written monuments consists in chronicles or annals. These presuppose the invention of an alphabet, and the adoption of some materials for writing upon they are, therefore, of a later date than mere inscriptions. They occur, nevertheless, in the earlier periods of nations. It is generally from such annals, indited by public authority, (state chronicles,) that the subsequent historians have drawn materials for their works. In many nations, and in nearly all those of the East, history has not, even to this day, advanced beyond the composition of such annals.

The third main division of historic writings is made up of the works on philosophic history: they are distinguished from mere annals by their containing not only a chronological narration of events, but also a development of the concatenation of those events.

As all events are determined by the place and time in which they occurred, it follows that geography and chronology are indispensable sciences, auxiliary to the study of all history, but more especially the ancient. Those sciences, however, are not, for this purpose, to be considered in their füllest extent and minutest details, but only so far as they may be of use towards arranging facts according to time and place. A fixed mode of computing time is therefore, in ancient history, not less necessary than a continuous geographical description of the countries which were the theatres of the principal events.—HEEREN.1

EDUCATION IN HISTORY.

If we would seize and comprehend the general outline of history, we must keep our eye steadily upon it; and must not suffer our attention to be confused by details, or drawn off by the objects immediately surrounding us.

Political events form but one part, and not the whole, of human history. A knowledge of details, however great and various it may be, constitutes no science in the philosophic sense of the word, for it is in the right and comprehensive conception of the whole that science consists.

1 Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren was born at Bremen in 1760, and received, in 1801, the Professorship of History in the University of Göttingen. His historical works are esteemed for their lucidness and simplicity.

As the greater part of the nine hundred millions of men on the whole surface of the earth, according to the highest estimate of a hazardous calculation, are born, live, and die, without a history of them being possible, or without their reckoning a fraction in the general history-so that the extremely small number of those called historical men, forms but a rare exception; so there are nations and countries, which in a general comparative survey of nations, serve but as a mark or evidence of some particular stage of civilisation, without of themselves holding any place in the general history of our species, or conducing to the social progress of mankind, or possessing any weight or importance in the scale of humanity.

There is a point of view, indeed, from which the matter appears under a different aspect, and is really different. To the all-seeing eye of Providence, every human life, however brief its duration, however apparently insignificant, presents a point of internal development and crisis, consequently a species of history, cognizable and visible to that Eye only, and therefore not entirely without an object. But this point of view belongs to another order of things, and is no longer historical; it has reference to the immortal destinies of the human soul, and the connexion of the present life with another world invisible to us. Our historical science is limited to the department of man's present existence; and in our historical inquiries we must not lose sight of this principle.

But the internal development of mind, so far as it is historical, belongs as much as the external events of politics to the department of human history, and must by no means be excluded from it. Among these rare exceptions of historical men must be named that ancient master of human acuteness, who was the teacher of Alexander the Great, and who perhaps holds not an humbler or less important place in this exalted sphere than the conqueror himself, although this philosopher, whose genius embraced nature, the world, and life, was by his own contemporaries less honoured and celebrated than by a remote posterity. Here in our western world, and long after the kingdoms founded by the Macedonian conqueror had disappeared, and were forgotten, Aristotle for many centuries reigned the absolute lord of the Christian schools, and directed the march of human science and human speculation in the middle age. Whether he were always rightly understood and studied in the right way is another

question, for here we are speaking of his overruling influence and historical importance. Nay, in later times, he has materially served the cause of the better natural philosophy founded on experience, in which he himself accomplished things so extraordinary for his age, and was originally, and for a long while, the guide and master.

The first fundamental rule of historical science and research, when by these is sought a knowledge of the general destinies of mankind, is to keep these and every object connected with them steadily in view, without losing ourselves in the details of special inquiries and particular facts, for the multitude and variety of these subjects is absolutely boundless; and on the ocean of historical science the main subject easily vanishes from the eye. In history, as in every branch of mental culture, the first elementary school-instruction is not merely an important, but an essential, condition to a higher and more scientific knowledge. At first, indeed, it is merely a nomenclature of celebrated personages and eventsa sketch of the great historical eras, divided according to chronological dates, or a geographical plan-which must be impressed on the memory, and which serves as a basis preparatory to that more vivid and comprehensive knowledge to be obtained in riper years. Thus this first knowledge stored up in the memory, and necessary for methodizing and arranging the mass of historical learning to be afterwards acquired, is more a preparation for the study of history than the real science of history itself. In the higher grades of academic instruction, the lessons on history must vary with each one's calling and pursuits-one course of historical reading is necessary for the theologian, another for the lawyer or civilian. To the physician, and in general to the naturalist, natural history, and what in the history of man is most akin to that science, will ever be the most captivating. And the philologist will find a boundless field for inquiry in special antiquarian researches, particularly now when, in addition to classical learning and the more common Oriental tongues, the languages and historical antiquities of the remoter nations of Asia have attracted the attention of European scholars, and the original sources are becoming every day more accessible.

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A second fundamental rule of historical science may be thus simply expressed :-We should not wish to explain everything. Historical tradition must never be abandoned in the

philosophy of history-otherwise we lose all firm ground and footing. But historical tradition, ever so accurately conceived and carefully sifted, doth not always, especially in the early and primitive ages, bring with it a full and demonstrative certainty. In such cases we have nothing to do but to record, as it is given, the best and safest testimony which tradition, so far as we have it, can afford-supposing even that some things in that testimony appear strange, obscure, and even enigmatical; and perhaps a comparison with some other part of historical science, or, if I may so speak, stream of tradition, will unexpectedly lead to the solution of the difficulty. Extremely hazardous is the desire to explain everything, and to supply whatever appears a gap in history; for in this propensity lies the first cause and germ of all those violent and arbitrary hypotheses which perplex and pervert the science of history far more than the open avowal of our ignorance, or the uncertainty of our knowledge: hypotheses which give an oblique direction, or an exaggerated and false extension, to a view of the subject originally not incorrect. And even if there are points which appear not very clear to us, or which we leave unexplained, this will not prevent us from comprehending, so far at least as the limited conception of man is able, the great outline of human history, though here and there a gap should remain.

This matter will be best explained by an example that will bring us at once to the subject we propose to treat. Let us imagine some bold navigators (and what we here suppose by way of example has more than once actually occurred) touching at some island inhabited by wild savages in the midst of the great ocean between America and Eastern Asia. This island lies, we suppose, at a very great distance from either continent, and the same will hold good of it, though there be a group of islands. These savages have but miserable fishingboats made of hollow trunks of trees, by which it is not easy to conceive how they could have been transported so far. The question now naturally occurs, how has this race of men come hither?

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A pagan natural philosophy, which even now dares often enough to raise its voice, would be very ready with its answer: There," it would say, "you see plainly how everything has sprung from the pap of the earth-the primitive slime; there is no need of the far-fetched idea of an imaginary Creator-these self-existing men of the earth-these