Abstract
One of the most remarkable phenomena in our recent historical literature is a tendency to whitewash all characters which had previously presented a black appearance; to prefer the intellectual divination of a subtle modern professor to the plain testimony of a sober old chronicler; and generally to unsettle all things that we had in previous ages been taught to look on as settled. That this tendency, dating from the gigantic excavations of Niebuhr and Wolf, had its origin in an honest love of truth, and a searching scrutiny of evidence, cannot be doubted. That its results have in the main been beneficial is equally certain; but, on the other hand, it is not to be denied that it has sometimes run into the most wanton excesses, and that it has tainted some of the most notable historical productions of our age with a vice which will render it necessary for a future generation to repeat the work now done from a broader point of view, and with a juster criticism.
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