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37. Much of what has been said on History applies, with allowances, to Biography.

A Biography professes to give the experience of a life, and may therefore bring to view and illustrate important truths respecting man's physical and mental nature. The examples presented to us in the lives of prominent men and women may have various hearings. They may instruct us how to preserve health (see, for instance, George Combe's Life of Andrew Combe), to attain knowledge and culture (the Lives of Philosophers, Scholars, Poets, &C.), to play a part in public affairs, to prosper in business, to regulate our families, or to do good in our generation.

Most commonly Biography gratifies our interest in some distinguished person, and is the more acceptable, the more it is invested with the colors and touehes of Poetry.

38. The Environment, or surrounding circumstances, physical and social, must be regarded as necessary to the delineation of a life.

Natural constitution and outward circumstances united are our means of explaining both a man's character and his career. The surroundings are no less demanded in a picture aiming only at poetic interest.

39. The form of Narrative occurs in Science and Poetry, as well as in History and Biography.

The Physical Sciences represent the operations of the world under the law of Cause and Effect. It is, however, in the sciences of Evolution, that we have the most characteristic examples of narrative. The growth of a plant, or of an animal, has to be recounted according to the rules of narrative.

In Poetry, narrative is much more abundant than description. The Epic poem and the Drama are based on story. Even descriptive themes are often handled by narrative devices. Homer describes the elaborate shield of Achilles, not by the direct method of Type and Enumeration, but by relating the steps of its manufacture, in the hands of its divine fabricators.

ORDER OF EVENTS.

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again to threaten the nations that he had previously conquered. The rest of Europe prepared to resist him. An army composed of English, Germans, Belgians, and Dutch, assembled and marched by the Low Countries to the French frontier.

22. It is sometimes best to commence by describing a recent state of things more familiar to the persons addressed, and then to point out by what previous steps that state was arrived at.

In this case also, the inversion of the order of time has a view to the explanation of the event. It corresponds to a rule in teaching science, requiring us, before propounding an explanation or solution, to state clearly the point to be explained, or the problem to be solved.

There could not be a better preparation for studying the history of Great Britain than a full acquaintance with all its existing institutions. Knowing exactly the state of things to be accounted for, we should be more alive to the flow of events that contributed to produce it.

This method is not unsuited to the case of nations that have ceased to exist. A full account of the Roman world in the age of Augustus might, not improperly, precede the early history of Rome.

In Geology, this plan is followed with advantage. It may be seen exemplified in Lyell's Elements, and in his Antiquity of Man.

23. II. It is necessary to provide for the narration of Concurring Streams of Events.

There are several distinct modes of concurrence.

(1.) A principal action, with subordinates; as in a campaign, in the history of a single country or of a collective interest, and in any complex proceeding where detached operations are carried on. In Romance and the Drama, subordinate events are essential to the plot.

Here the art consists in upholding the prominence of the main stream of the narrative. In relating the subordinate transactions, the historian has to make apparent their subordination.

The forms of language announcing the transition from the principal current to the minor streams, and back again, should be explicit. The separation into distinct chapters contributes to the same end.

24. In imitation of the descriptive art, it is possible to give a comprehensive scheme, or plan, of the events, principal and subsidiary.

Many narratives may be brought under the similitude of the tree. Not merely the genealogy of families, but the progress of colonization, the diffusion of races, and the spread of languages, are adapted to this representation.

Carlyle draws upon his usual boldness of metaphor to supply these comprehensive narrative plans. We quote a few specimens:—The Royalist army at Worcester, pressed by Cromwell, is a lion in the folds of a boa; the confused politics of Poland in the end of the 17th century, he styles the Polish Donnybrook fair; George II., distracted by opposite alliances, is the Hanoverian white horse between seven sieves of beans.

Helps, aware of the peculiarly involved nature of the history of American discovery by the Spaniards, tries various devices for grappling with it. He remarks, on the occasion of a passing reference to the third voyage of Columbus :—

"This voyage will have, hereafter, to be carefully recounted. I am so convinced, however, that the best chance for the reader to remember any of the entangled history of the discovery and settlement of Spanish America is to have it told to him according to place, and not to date, that I entirely postpone all farther allusion to Columbus, until that part of the coast which he discovered becomes important in the general narrative."

25. (2.) Concurring streams of nearly equal importance; as in the History of Greece.

In this instance, we may be said to have a plurality of histories, embraced in the same work. In Grecian history, for example, Athens, Sparta, Argos, Thebes, Corinth, &C., the Asiatic, the Italian, and the Sicilian Greeks,—pursue for the most part their independent career, broken only by their mutual conflicts.

CONCURRING STEEAMS.

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The historian of collective Greece has to execute his task by a series of distinct narratives.

26. (3.) The case of two or more contending parties. Hostile operations introduce a new element to perplex and complicate the narrative.

In depicting warfare, or any species of contest, the historian narrates sometimes from one side, and sometimes from the other. Now it is essential to a clear understanding of the operations that the change of position should be open and declared. Actual conflict involves both parties; and there is great danger of bringing about confusion in the picture, by passing in a stealthy manner between the two sides. An eye-witness, like Kinglake at the Alma, retains his point of view throughout; a compiler from various witnesses differently stationed is liable to those furtive transitions of scene. The most obvious course seems to be to describe the preparations first on one side and then on the other; and, during the shock of battle, to adhere to one point of view. This is the usual method of Carlyle. In describing the battle of Prag, he gives a full account of the preparations on the part of the Austrians, and then makes the transition thus : "We will now return to Friedrich; and will stay on his side through the terrible action that is coming."

27. (4.) The plurality of departments in the same historical unity.

A nation plays many parts at one time. Its Foreign relations, which are its wars, diplomacy, and colonization, figure in the history of the world. Even when they do not absorb the historian's attention, they are usually recounted apart. The Internal or Domestic history is itself open to subdivision. The struggles to determine the Government, or the Political Constitution, rank first in prominence. There may be other questions that stir the whole life of the nation, and afford an exciting theme of narrative; such are the Revolutions in Religion. After these, come the subjects of quieter interest; Administrative improvements, and the progress of Literature, Art, and Sci

ence. Although the various currents of events must often come together, it is the practice of the best historians to follow them. separately. As in battles, so in all other cases of action and reaction, a view from both sides is desirable. The conduct of a war is affected by the vicissitudes of political parties at home; Religious Revolutions are entwined with Literature; Administrative changes (Police, Pauperism, Education, Commercial Policy) are at the mercy of all other influences; still, the separation of the parts conduces to the understanding of the whole.

28. III. The detail of events should be relieved and assisted by summaries.

We have already noticed the use of the summary to prepare for the commencement of a narrative. Its application is much more extensive. It is the comprehensive view that embraces the details in an organized whole such as the mind can retain. No department of composition having a host of particulars to present, is able to dispense with this aid.

An example from Helps is worthy of being given entire :—

"The narrative, after many turnings and windings, in the difficult navigation of affairs at court, has now come to that point where Las Casas, having conquered his troubles in Spain, was ready to start for the Terra-firma, tolerably well equipped with all the things that were necessary for a great enterprise of colonization in that part of the world. It remains to be seen how far the Terrafirma was ready to receive him; and whether there would be that concurrence of favorable circumstances upon which success in any enterprise depends, or at least without which success is in the highest degree difficult. For this purpose, it is necessary for the writer to go back a long way in the history of the Indies, to resuscitate Columbus, who had now for many years found the true rest of the tomb, and to describe, at some length, the discovery and settlement of that part of the Terra-firma which had been granted by the King of Spain to the Olerigo, Las Casas.

"Nay further, to bring the subject with anything like completeness before the mind of the reader, it will be advisable to anticipate the Spanish Conquest, and to make some endeavor, at least, to describe the inhabitants of the coast of Cumana (otherwise called the Pearl Coast), and their mode of life, before they bad seen the face of a white man. Hitherto, in the course of this narrative, when the word 'Indians' has occurred, it has conveyed little

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