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We are speaking of history as it appears in its finest specimens -- of works of which the author is equally a man of genius and a lover of truth. But when, as is unhappily the case with almost every distinguished historical writer, he is the advocate or the victim of a peculiar political, ethical, or religious system, his works with all their elaborate and brilliant merits, become the vehicles of most injurious influences on the minds of students. No union can be more dangerous than that of scepticism and prejudice. Yet the uncertainty of the facts with which history has to do is sure to produce the former, while the latter is very likely to result from the education and social circumstances of historical writers.

Do historical works justify their observations? We will glance at a few of them, and they shall be selected from the highest class. What are the nine Books of Herodotus but a series of interesting fictions, or at best, myths? Thucydides is a great painter and his pictures of war and other national calamities are terribly graphic and impressive. But his representations of Grecian character, and especially of Athenian politics, are considered to be greatly blemished by narrow and surly prejudices. Livy ranks no higher than Herodotus as a teacher of truth, and Tacitus is more gloomy and unconfiding in Providence and man than Thucydides. Of Gibbon, we have already expressed a general opinion. He is the most able, brilliant, unfaithful and dangerous of all writers on facts -- the Lucifer of History. -- Humes's beautiful diction flows along like a river. But two subjects can disturb his cold, unearnest, unbelieving soul, one of them national, the other religious. He never tires of lauding the Stuarts, or ridiculing Quakers. Four great men have written histories of the English Revolution of 1688, Fox, Macintosh, Lord Mahon and Macauley. Yet how different are their representations of the same events and the characters. If two persons should read, one the history of Macauley, and the other that of Mahon, and should enter upon a discussion of the characters of Godolphin and Walpole -- so different are the materials furnished by the two authors, that they would hardly suppose themselves to be talking of the same men. Guizot, who has been styled by eminence the philosopher of history, is a sceptic. His works betray none of that hopefulness and positive teaching, which can result only from a conviction that the experience of past ages is to be depended on as the index of those which are to come. Michelet is possessed of great abilities, but is so irreverent to truth and so wedded to theories, that he declares all history fictitious which does not square with his own political or deistical system. Macauley, the fine critic, but superficial historian, who plays with the great facts of time as a boy plays with fire-balls, producing a great flash, yet no useful, but sometimes, dangerous results, is a scoffer at human nature, and will, we apprehend, be regarded by a generation of readers not very distant as a fascinating but egregious liar. We will mention but two other -- the celebrated historians of the north of Europe, Niebuhr and Neandor. -- The former is avowedly a rationalist; and, therefore, looks on the historic art as a medium for the display of such a series of events as seem to accord with his views of what is reasonable. His opinions are of course the standard of historic truth. Of Neander no man should think or speak but with reverence and love. With his genius and learning were united a blameless purity of heart and life. But his great soul could only be satisfied with that which was susceptible of being reduced to a harmonious system. He could not look on the events which are taking place in the world as the manifestation of the ever-watchful, and particular, and therefore, ever-varying, Providence of GOD, but was ever in search of some connecting bond which tied together all human occurrences in an unbroken series -- extending towards, illustrating and terminating in the sovereignty of Christ. In Ecclesiastical History he has endeavored to construct a system analogous to what is attempted with such ingenuity and splendor by Humboldt, in his Kosmos or general view of the physical universe. He has hoped to find a universal harmony, where no such harmony exists; and to gratify his love of order by efforts to arrange and classify phenomena, which the Bible assures us are nothing else than the movements of that all-seeing and all-loving Providence to promote the real, permanent, eternal welfare of each individual human being.

If such defects belong essentially to history, wherein is it of any value? -- To this question we answer substantially as Macauley has done in one of his reviews -- we cannot recall which of them. History is useful in breaking up the influence of those associations with our country, government, and social or local circumstances which are the sources of numerous unhappy prejudices. -- We are taught by learning the condition of man far distant from ourselves in time and place, to dismiss our narrow and groundless partialities, to enlarge the field of our sympathies, and to substitute for prejudices with regard to character, manners and government, that candid and comprehensive habit of mind which sees and owns merit wherever it is to be found, and is not blind to faults even if they exist in our own persons, neighborhood or country. And, more than this; though we cannot refuse a general assent to Coleridge's remark, that "the lights of experience are to most men like the stern lights of a ship, throwing their radiance backward only, but bearing no illumination on the forward path," yet there are some lessons taught by history, which cannot be disregarded. If it were not for the examples of great virtue which the historian places before us, the world would sink to ruin from the want of a high yet attainable standard of excellence. And a most solemn instruction is forced upon us by the records of national crime and disaster -- of which it is not too much to say, that they are like those famous battle-fields, on which the triumphs of justice have been won, and permanent peace and prosperity have been the result -- though the field itself exhibits nothing but the traces of death and desolation.