Rt_ of history is older than Herodotus, older than Moses, older than printed language. It is based, like every other art, on certain truths, general and special, principles and facts; its process, like that of every other art, is the Imagination, the creative principle of genius,
using these truths as its rules and its materials,
working by them and upon them, applying and idealizing
them. That there is such a thing as historical art has also, we know, been disputed. It is one of the exceedingly strong convictions--he will not allow us to call them opinions--entertained by the distinguished author of "Modern Painters," and expressed by him in a lecture delivered at Edinburgh, that past ages are to be studied only in the records which they have themselves left,--letters, contemporary memoirs, and the like sources. Works built upon these he calls "restorations," weak and servile copies, from which the spirit of the original has fled. He accordingly advises every one who would make himself really acquainted with the manners and events of a former period to go at once to the fountain-head and learn what that period said for itself in its own dialect and style. It might be sufficient mildly to warn any person who thinks of adopting this advice, that, unless the field of his intended researches be very limited, or the amount of time which he proposes to devote to the study very great, the result can scarcely be of a satisfactory nature. But there is another answer to Mr.
Ruskin, which has more force when addressed to one so renowned as a critic and exponent
of Art. The eye of Genius seizes what escapes ordinary observation. The province of Art is to _reveal_ Nature, to elucidate her obscurities, to present her, not otherwise than as she _is_, but more truthfully and more completely than she _appears_ to the common eye. O
