This gentleman can never want matter for pride, if he finds it so easily.  He may boast of an indisputable superiority to all the greatest men of all past ages.  He can read and write:  Homer probably did not know a letter.  He has been taught that the earth goes round the sun:  Archimedes held that the sun went round the earth.  He is aware that there is a place called New Holland:  Columbus and Gama went to their graves in ignorance of the fact.  He has heard of the Georgium Sidus:  Newton was ignorant of the existence of such a planet.  He is acquainted with the use of gunpowder:  Hannibal and Caesar won their victories with sword and spear.  We submit, however, that this is not the way in which men are to be estimated.  We submit that a wooden spoon of our day would not be justified in calling Galileo and Napier blockheads, because they never heard of the differential calculus.  We submit that Caxton’s press in Westminster Abbey, rude as it is, ought to be looked at with quite as much respect as the best constructed machinery that ever, in our time, impressed the clearest type on the finest paper.  Sydenham first discovered that the cool regimen succeeded best in cases of small-pox.  By this discovery he saved the lives of hundreds of thousands; and we venerate his memory for it, though he never heard of inoculation.  Lady Mary Montague brought inoculation into use; and we respect her for it, though she never heard of vaccination.  Jenner introduced vaccination; we admire him for it, and we shall continue to admire him for it, although some still safer and more agreeable preservative should be discovered.  It is thus that we ought to judge of the events and the men of other times.  They were behind us.  It could not be otherwise.  But the question with respect to them is not where they were, but which way they were going.  Were their faces set in the right or in the wrong direction?  Were they in the front or in the rear of their generation?  Did they exert themselves to help onward the great movement of the human race, or to stop it?  This is not charity, but simple justice and common sense.  It is the fundamental law of the world in which we live that truth shall grow, first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.  A person who complains of the men of 1688 for not having been men of 1835 might just as well complain of a projectile for describing a parabola, or of quicksilver for being heavier than water.

Undoubtedly we ought to look at ancient transactions by the light of modern knowledge.  Undoubtedly it is among the first duties of a historian to point out the faults of the eminent men of former generations.  There are no errors which are so likely to be drawn into precedent, and therefore none which it is so necessary to expose, as the errors of persons who have a just title to the gratitude and admiration of posterity.  In politics, as in religion, there are devotees who show their reverence for a departed saint by converting