that no historian was ever more profound, conscientious, and careful; and all modern investigations confirm his sagacity and impartiality.  He was one of the most accomplished men of antiquity, or of any age,—­an enlightened and curious traveller, a profound thinker; a man of universal knowledge, familiar with the whole range of literature, art, and science in his day; acquainted with all the great men of Greece and at the courts of Asiatic princes; the friend of Sophocles, of Pericles, of Thucydides, of Aspasia, of Socrates, of Damon, of Zeno, of Phidias, of Protagoras, of Euripides, of Polygnotus, of Anaxagoras, of Xenophon, of Alcibiades, of Lysias, of Aristophanes,—­the most brilliant constellation of men of genius who were ever found together within the walls of a Grecian city,—­respected and admired by these great lights, all of whom were inferior to him in knowledge.  Thus was he fitted for his task by travel, by study, and by intercourse with the great, to say nothing of his original genius.  The greatest prose work which had yet appeared in Greece was produced by Herodotus,—­a prose epic, severe in taste, perfect in unity, rich in moral wisdom, charming in style, religious in spirit, grand in subject, without a coarse passage; simple, unaffected, and beautiful, like the narratives of the Bible, amusing yet instructive, easy to understand, yet extending to the utmost boundaries of human research,—­a model for all subsequent historians.  So highly was this historic composition valued by the Athenians when their city was at the height of its splendor that they decreed to its author ten talents (about twelve thousand dollars) for reciting it.  He even went from city to city, a sort of prose rhapsodist, or like a modern lecturer, reciting his history,—­an honored and extraordinary man, a sort of Humboldt, having mastered everything.  And he wrote, not for fame, but to communicate the results of inquiries made to satisfy his craving for knowledge, which he obtained by personal investigation at Dodona, at Delphi, at Samos, at Athens, at Corinth, at Thebes, at Tyre; he even travelled into Egypt, Scythia, Asia Minor, Palestine, Babylonia, Italy, and the islands of the sea.  His episode on Egypt is worth more, from an historical point of view, than all things combined which have descended to us from antiquity.  Herodotus was the first to give dignity to history; nor in truthfulness, candor, and impartiality has he ever been surpassed.  His very simplicity of style is a proof of his transcendent art, even as it is the evidence of his severity of taste.  The translation of this great history by Rawlinson, with notes, is invaluable.