life of alexander or of yet by no means so easy to find one who could do justice to napoleon lord bacon was right in leaving his name and memory to foreign nations and to mine own countrymen after some time be passed over we are far from thinking lord bacon so great as many men esteem him but at his death there was no man among his own countrymen or in foreign nations meet to be his judge the followers of collected only a few scanty of the man and they who have since undertaken his life are proofs that the world has not caught up with his thoughts nor its foremost men risen high enough to examine to and to judge a spirit so but after all no advance of mankind no culture however nice and extensive will ever enable a or a to write the life of a or even a it no y character of mr as an march would be hard even now to find a man in d or out of it competent to give us the biography of even if he had all that annals and might furnish now an historian is to a nation what a is to a man he is not a bare to the of a nation and his reader with a mere of events however great and brilliantly colored � events which have a connection of time and place but no meaning coming from no recognized cause and leading to no conclusion he is to give us the nation s life � its outer life in the civil military and commercial transactions its inner life in the thought and feeling of the people if the historian undertake the entire of a nation that has completed its career of existence then he must describe the country as it was when the people first appeared to take possession thereof and point out e successive changes which they e� therein the position of the country its natural features � its waters mountains plains its soil climate and productions � all are important elements which help the character of the nation the historian is to tell of the n of the people of their rise their decline their fall and end to show how they acted on the world and the world on them � what was given and received the causes which advanced or the nation are to be sought and their action explained he is to inquire what sentiments and ideas in the nation whence they came from without the people or from within how they got organized and with what result hence not merely are the civil and military transactions to be looked after but the philosophy which in the nation is to be ascertained and of the laws and religion the historian is to describe the condition of the people � the state of commerce and the arts � both the useful and the beautiful to inform us of the means of internal communication of the intercourse with other nations � military commercial literary or religious he must tell of the social state of the people the relation of the to the soil the relation of class to class it is important to know how the of the state are raised how the taxes are � on person or property directly or indirectly in what manner they are collected and how a particular tax affects the of the people the writer of a nation s life must look at the whole people not merely at any one class noble or and of mr an most ve the net result of their entire action so that at the end of his book we can say this people had such sentiments and ideas which led to this and the other deeds and institutions which have been attended by such and such results they added this or that to the general achievement of tiie human race now in the history of each nation there are some men in whom the spirit of the nation seems to � either because they are more the nation than the nation is itself or because by their eminent power they the tion to take the form of these individuals such men are to be distinctly studied and carefully for while the nation s genius they are an of its history la a first survey we know a nation best by its great men as a country by its mountains and its plains its waters and its shores � by its great characters still while these eminent men are to be put in the of the picture the class is by no means to be neglected in the family of man there are elder and younger brothers it is a poor history which either class a few facts from the every day life of the merchant the slave the peasant the are often worth more as signs of the times than a chapter which relates the of a though these are not to be overlooked it is well to know what songs the peasant sung what prayers he prayed what food he ate what tools he wrought with what tax he how he stood connected with the soil how he was brought to war and what weapons armed him for the fight it is not very important to know whether general commanded on the right or the left whether he charged or whether he rode a bright chestnut horse or a gray nor whether he got dismounted by the breaking of his saddle or the stumbling of his beast but it is important to know whether the soldiers were well or ill and whether they came voluntarily to the war and fought in with a will or were brought to the conflict against their own consent not much caring which side was victorious in telling what has been the historian is also to tell what ought 