With the imposing array of professed histories and historians in view, it is curious to revert to the actual sources of our own historic ideas,—those which are definite and pervasive. The vast number of intelligent readers, who have made no special study of this kind of literature, probably derive their most distinct and attractive impressions of the past from poetry, travel, and the choicest works of the novelist; local association and imaginative sympathy, rather than formal chronicles, have enlightened and inspired them in regard to Antiquity and the great events and characters of modern Europe. This fact alone suggests how inadequate for popular effect have been the average labors of historians; and so fixed is the opinion among scholars that it is impossible for the annalist to be profound and interesting, authentic and animated, at the same time, that a large class of the learned repudiate as spurious the renown of Macaulay,—although his research and his minuteness cannot be questioned, and only in a few instances has his accuracy been successfully impugned. They distrust him chiefly because he is agreeable, doubt his correctness for the reason that his style fascinates, and deem admiration for him inconsistent with their own self-respect, because he is such a favorite as no historian ever was before, and his account of a parliament, a coinage, or a feud as winsome as a portraiture of a woman. In one of his critical essays, Macaulay himself gives a partial explanation of this protest of the minority in his own case. "People," he remarks, "are very loath to admit that the same man can unite very different kinds of excellence. It is soothing to envy to believe that what is splendid cannot be solid and what is clear cannot be profound." And it has been most justly said of his own method of writing history, "He must make everything clear and bright, and bring it into the range of his analysis; his exaggeration chiefly applies to individual characters, not to general facts"; and the reason given for the decided preference manifested for his vivid record is not less true than philosophical,—"We learn so much from him enjoyably." It is precisely the lack of this pleasurable trait which makes the greater part of the annals of the past a dead letter to the world, and wins to romance, ballad, epic, fiction, relic, and poetry the keen attention which facts coldly "set in a note-book" never enlisted. How many of us unconsciously have adopted the portraits of the early English kings as Shakspeare drew them! To what a host of living souls is the history of Scotland what the author of "Waverley" makes it! Charles I. haunts the fancy, not as drawn by Hume, but as painted by Vandyck. The institutions of the Middle Ages are realized to every reflective tourist through the architecture of Florence more than by the municipal details of Hallam. Pyramids, obelisks, mummies have brought home Egyptian civilization; the "old masters," that of Europe in the fifteenth century; the ruins of the Colosseum, Roman art and barbarism, as they never were by Livy or Gibbon. Lady Russell's letters tell us of the Civil War in England,—Saint Mark's, at Venice, of Byzantine taste and Oriental commerce,—the Escurial and the Alhambra, Versailles, a castle on the Rhine, and a "modest mansion on the banks of the Potomac," of their respective eras and their characteristics, social, political, religious,—more than the most elaborate register, muster-roll, or judicial calendar. For around and within these memorials lingers the life of Humanity; they speak to the eye as well as to memory,—to the heart as well as the intelligence; they draw us by human associations to the otherwise but technical statement; they lure us to repeople solitudes and reanimate shadows; and having become intimate with the scenes, the effigies, the monuments of the Past, we have, as it were, a vantage-ground of actual experience an impulse from personal observation and, perhaps, a sympathy born of local inspiration, whereby the phantoms of departed ages are once more clothed with flesh, and their sorrows and triumphs are renewed in the soul of enlightened contemplation.
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MY NEIGHBOR, THE PROPHET.
The point of commencement for a story is altogether arbitrary. Some writers stick to Nature and go back to the Creation; others take a few dozen of the grandfatherly old centuries for granted; others seize Time by the forelock and bounce into the middle of a narrative; but, as I said before, the beginning is a mere matter of taste and convenience. I choose to open my tale with the day on which I took possession of my newly purchased country-house.
It was a pretty little cottage, wooden, old-fashioned, a story and a half high, with a long veranda, a shady door-yard, and a sunny garden. I bought it as it was, furniture included, of a gentleman who was about to remove southward on account of his wife's health, or, to speak more exactly, on account of her want of it. I laugh here to think how surprised you will be when you learn that these matters have no connection with my story. All the important events which I propose to relate might have happened had this gentleman never sold nor I purchased; and, as a proof of it, I can adduce the fact that they actually did occur some years before we enjoyed the honor of each other's acquaintance. But I could not resist the temptation of the episode. I am as delighted at getting into my first house as was my little son when he poked his chubby legs into his first trousers.
"Who is my nearest neighbor?" I asked of the former proprietor, when he made his parting call.
"What, the occupant of the new house just below you? I can tell you very little of him. I haven't made his acquaintance, and don't know his name. We call him the Mormon."
"Mercy on us! You don't mean to hint at anything in the way of polygamy,
I hope. He doesn't keep an omnibus with seats for twenty, does he?"
"No, not so bad as that. In fact, I don't know much about him. I thought you were aware of his—his style of living," stammered my friend. "Oh, I dare say he is respectable enough. But then we noticed three or four women about the house, and only one man; and so we clapped the title of Mormon on him. Nicknaming is funny work, you know,—a short and easy way to be witty. I believe, however, that he does pretend to be a prophet."
"The Pilgrim Fathers protect us! Why, he may attempt to proselytize us by force. He may declare a religious war against us. It would be no joke, if he should invade us with the sword in one hand, and the Koran, or whatever he may call his revelation, in the other."