Marshall County Republican. (Plymouth, Ind.) 1856-1878, 1871-08-17
Imagination in History.

Ii has seldom or ever been noticed how
important among the intellectual qualIfi-
cations for the study OF history, is vivid
Z imagination-a faculty which, conse-
quently, skiliul narrator must himself
7 possess, and to which he must be able to
! furnish excitement in others. Some may
perhaps be startled at this remark, who
have been accustomed to consider imagi-
nation as having no other office than to
ia ign and falsIfy. Every faculty is liable
to abuse and instruction, and magma
ton among the rest; butt is mistake to
suppose that it necessarily tends to per-
vert the truth of history, and to mislead
the Judgment. On the contrary, our
view of any transaction, especially one
that is remote in time o. place, will neces-
sarily be imperfect, generally incorrect
unless it embrace something more than
bare outline of the occurrences nnless
we have before the mind a lively idea of
the scenes in which the events took place
the habits of thought and of feeling of the
actors, and all the circumstances connect
ed with the transaction unless. in short
we can, in Il considerable degree, trans
port ourselves out of our own age and
country, and persons, and imagine our
selves the agents or spectators. 1t is
from consideration of all these circum-
stances. that We are enabled to form a
right judgment a to the facts which his
tory records, and To derive instruction
from it. What we imagine may, indeed,
be wholly Imaginary 1. {. unreal; but it
may be what actually does or did exist
To say that Imagination, if not regulated
10y sound Judgment and sufficient knowl-
edge may chance to convey To us false
impressions of past events, is only to say
that man Is falliblc. But such false i'm
preSsi0ns are even much the more likely
to take possession of those whose imagi-
nation is feeble or uncultivated. They
are apt to imagine the things, persons.
times. countries, &c, which they read of,
as much less different from what they see
around them than is really the case
ARCHBISHOP WHATELy.
Death Of an Aged Lady.
The Columbus Statesman says: Zone
of the women of the Revolution, and the
mother of a distinguished citizen of
Ohio dice or the 18th of July, at Newark
New Jersey, at the advanced age of one
hundred and two years. This was Mrs.
Frances Finley. Her maiden name was
" mans, OF the New Jersey family of that
name, y relative of Ross Winans, of Bal
timore She was born in 1868, and mar
ried in the last year of the Revolution,
1888, eighty years since, To the late DR..
Jonas Stanbery, who died in GAINESVILLE,
Ohio She afterwards married Professor
Finley, of Princeton College. William
Stanbery. Of Newark, Ohio, now eighty
three years of age is her only surviving
child; he il an ex-member of Congress.
and was chairman of the Finance Com
mittee and leader of the House for time
during the administration of General
Jackson. Mrs. Finley was lady of
strong intellect and cultivated mind. She
was personally acquainted with General
Washington, Dewitt Clinton, Washing
ton Irving. Robert Fulton, and many
others of the great distinguished men of
her period Her fathers house was fire.
quently the resort of generals of both
armies in the Revolution, and she had
vivid memory of all the stirring events of
that period in her vicinity. She was
eight years old ut the commencement and
sixteen at the termination of the war-N
ZGHesrWe Gazette.