Lastly, the fifth fact relates to Calvin. A Genevese writer denied a few years back that Calvin, when returning from Italy, passed through Aosta, where there exists, however, a monument erected to commemorate his flight. The author hopes he has proved that the universal opinion, which makes the Reformer pass through that city, is well founded, and that the contrary opinion has no weight.

This last point is discussed in the Preface to the French edition of this volume: the four others are examined at length in an article entitled Critique d'une Critique, published in the Revue Chrétienne of Paris.

There are individuals who, when they meet with facts in a history that have not been previously discussed in an archæological dissertation, or with circumstances that had hitherto been unknown, immediately imagine that such facts have no foundation. This is a curious aberration. If an historian writes—not according to second-hand authorities, but after original materials—it is quite natural that he should come upon things that have not been noticed before. This has happened to the author of the History of the Reformation. True history, no doubt, possesses coloring and life; but it describes such events only as are founded on the firm basis of truth.

There are writers at this day who carry their archæological predilections further still and would like to substitute chronicles for history, giving us a body without a soul. But authors of distinguished merit have protested against such an error.

A great critic, M. Sainte Beuve, says: 'There is one kind of history founded on documentary evidence, state papers, diplomatic transactions, and the correspondence of ambassadors; and there is another kind with quite a different aspect—moral history, written by the actors and the eye-witnesses.'

An eminent man (Le Comte d'Haussonville) who by his last work, L'Eglise Romaine et le premier Empire, has taken an honorable position among historians, indorses this judgment. 'M. Sainte Beuve is right,' he says; 'the latter kind of history is the best, by which I mean the most instructive, the most profitable, the only one which serves to unseal the eyes, open the understanding, combat deplorable credulity, and avoid disagreeable mystifications. What concerns us, is to know men, "by lifting the curtain which hides them," according to the happy expression of Saint-Simon.'

Another celebrated writer has said: 'Real history appears only when the historian begins to distinguish, across the gulf of time, the living and acting man—the man endued with passions, the creature of habit—with voice and physiognomy, with gestures and dress, distinct and complete, like the one from whom we have just parted in the street. Language, Legislation, Catechisms, are abstract things; the complete thing is the man acting, the visible corporeal man, who walks, fights, toils, hates, and loves.

'Why is not history studied more closely? In it men would find human life, domestic life with its varied and dramatic scenes; the human heart with its fiercest as well as its tenderest passions, and moreover a sovereign charm—the charm of reality.'

Lastly, we read in the studies of M. Daunou, one of the most accredited masters of historical composition, that 'history which is naturally picturesque and dramatic has become in modern times dull and cold, and no longer presents those living images of men and things which ancient genius loved to trace.'

History had freed herself from the restraint which the Middle Ages had imposed on her, to prevent her from speaking naturally and with life, as men speak; and perhaps the lessons of the illustrious academician and peer of France, whom we have just quoted, may have contributed to this change. But for some time observers have been asking whether there is not reason to fear a return of the Middle Ages; whether men are not again attempting to fasten a gag on history. One might at times be led to say that archæologists are of opinion that history might be suppressed as a matter of luxury, a useless ornament, and be replaced by documents, diplomas, and extracts from registers strung together.