Such speeches as we find in Thucydides, for example, of which we can positively assert that they are not bona fide reports, would seem to make against our statement that a historian of his class presents us no reflected picture, that persons and people appear in his works in propria persona ...  Granted that such orations as those of Pericles—­that most profoundly accomplished, genuine, noble statesman—­were elaborated by Thucydides, it must yet be maintained that they were not foreign to the character of the speaker.  In the orations in question, these men proclaim the maxims adopted by their countrymen and formative of their own character; they record their views of their political relations and of their moral and spiritual nature, and publish the principles of their designs and conduct.  What the historian puts into their mouths is no supposititious system of ideas, but an uncorrupted transcript of their intellectual and moral habitudes.

Of these historians whom we must make thoroughly our own, with whom we must linger long if we would live with their respective nations and enter deeply into their spirit—­of these historians to whose pages we may turn, not for the purposes of erudition merely, but with a view to deep and genuine enjoyment, there are fewer than might be imagined.  Herodotus, the Father, namely the Founder, of History, and Thucydides have been already mentioned.  Xenophon’s Retreat of the Ten Thousand is a work equally original.  Caesar’s Commentaries are the simple masterpiece of a mighty spirit; among the ancients these annalists were necessarily great captains and statesmen.  In the Middle Ages, if we except the bishops, who were placed in the very centre of the political world, the monks monopolize this category as naive chroniclers who were as decidedly isolated from active life as those elder annalists had been connected with it.  In modern times the relations are entirely altered.  Our culture is essentially comprehensive, and immediately changes all events into historical representations.  Belonging to the class in question, we have vivid, simple, clear narrations—­especially of military transactions—­which might fairly take their place with those of Caesar.  In richness of matter and fulness of detail as regards strategic appliances and attendant circumstances, they are even more instructive.  The French “Memoirs” also fall under this category.  In many cases these are written by men of mark, though relating to affairs of little note; they not unfrequently contain such a large amount of anecdotal matter that the ground they occupy is narrow and trivial.  Yet they are often veritable masterpieces in history, as are those of Cardinal Retz, which, in fact, trench on a larger historical field.  In Germany such masters are rare, Frederick the Great in his Histoire de mon temps being an illustrious exception.  Writers of this order must occupy an elevated position, for only from such a position is it possible to take an extensive view of affairs—­to see everything.  This is out of the question for him who from below merely gets a glimpse of the great world through a miserable cranny.