"I agree with Miss Gordon, entirely. There is a great deal of very stupid respectable trifling, which people pursue under the head of courses of reading," he said. "And I don't wonder that most compends of history which are studied in schools should inspire any lively young lady with a life-long horror, not only of history, but of reading."
"Do you think so?" said Nina, with a look of inexpressible relief.
"I do, indeed," said Clayton. "And it would have been a very good thing for many of our historians, if they had been obliged to have shaped their histories so that they would interest a lively school-girl. We literary men, then, would have found less sleepy reading. There is no reason why a young lady, who would sit up all night reading a novel, should not be made to sit up all night with a history. I'll venture to say there's no romance can come up to the gorgeousness and splendor, and the dramatic power, of things that really have happened. All that's wanting is to have it set before us with an air of reality."
"But, then," said Nina, "you'd have to make the history into a romance."
"Well, a good historical romance is generally truer than a dull history; because it gives some sort of conception of the truth; whereas, the dull history gives none."
"Well, then," said Nina, "I'll confess, now, that about all the history I do know has been got from Walter Scott's novels. I always told our history-teacher so; but she insisted upon it that it was very dangerous reading."
"For my part," said Mrs. Nesbit, "I've a great horror of novel-reading, particularly for young ladies. It did me a great deal of harm when I was young. It dissipates the mind; it gives false views of life."
"Oh, law!" said Nina. "We used to write compositions about that, and I've got it all by heart—how it raises false expectations, and leads people to pursue phantoms, rainbows, and meteors, and all that sort of thing!"
"And yet," said Clayton, "all these objections would lie against perfectly true history, and the more so just in proportion to its truth. If the history of Napoleon Bonaparte were graphically and minutely given, it would lie open to the very same objections. It would produce the very same cravings for something out of the commonplace course of life. There would be the same dazzling mixture of bad and good qualities in the hero, and the same lassitude and exhaustion after the story was finished. And common history does not do this, simply because it is not true—does not produce a vivid impression of the reality as it happened."