great emphasis on minute details, and neglect the art of generalization.  If an historian attempts to embody too much learning, he is likely to be deficient in originality; if he would say everything, he is apt to be dry; if he elaborates too much, he loses animation.  Moreover, different classes of readers require different kinds and styles of histories; there must be histories for students, histories for old men, histories for young men, histories to amuse, and histories to instruct.  If all men were to write history according to Dr. Arnold’s views, we should have histories of interest only to classical scholars.  The ancient historians never quoted their sources of knowledge, but were valued for their richness of thoughts and artistic beauty of style.  The ages in which they flourished attached no value to pedantic displays of learning paraded in foot-notes.

Thus the great historians whom I have mentioned, both Greek and Latin, have few equals and no superiors in our own times in those things that are most to be admired.  They were not pedants, but men of immense genius and genuine learning, who blended the profoundest principles of moral wisdom with the most fascinating narrative,—­men universally popular among learned and unlearned, great artists in style, and masters of the language in which they wrote.

Rome can boast of no great historian after Tacitus, who should have belonged to the Ciceronian epoch.  Suetonius, born about the year 70 A.D., shortly after Nero’s death, was rather a biographer than an historian; nor as a biographer does he take a high rank.  His “Lives of the Caesars,” like Diogenes Laertius’s “Lives of the Philosophers,” are rather anecdotical than historical.  L. Anneus Florus, who flourished during the reign of Trajan, has left a series of sketches of the different wars from the days of Romulus to those of Augustus.  Frontinus epitomized the large histories of Pompeius.  Ammianus Marcellinus wrote a history from Nerva to Valens, and is often quoted by Gibbon.  But none wrote who should be adduced as examples of the triumph of genius, except Sallust, Caesar, Livy, Plutarch, and Tacitus.

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There is another field of prose composition in which the Greeks and Romans gained great distinction, and proved themselves equal to any nation of modern times,—­that of eloquence.  It is true, we have not a rich collection of ancient speeches; but we have every reason to believe that both Greeks and Romans were most severely trained in the art of public speaking, and that forensic eloquence was highly prized and munificently rewarded.  It began with democratic institutions, and flourished as long as the People were a great power in the State; it declined whenever and wherever tyrants bore rule.  Eloquence and liberty flourish together; nor can there be eloquence where there is not freedom of debate.  In the fifth century before Christ—­the first century of democracy—­great orators arose,