Thoughts of the Times: Men and Things (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Thoughts of the Times: Men and Things

The school of example is the world: and the masters of this school are history and experience.-bolingbroke.

History has been cultivated in our time with more than ordinary diligence and success. Historians have become more accurate in their facts, sounder in their principles, and certainly not less picturesque in their narrative. Here, however, as elsewhere, the mechanical spirit of the age has obtruded itself; forgetting that many parts, without union, will not make one whole, we must have our division of labour, and forthwith issue from divers intellectual mills histories picturesque which do not amuse, and histories philosophical which do not instruct. A bundle of laborious essays and exaggerated romances tied up together, is a poor substitute for a living, comprehensive history.

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