the sort of talk it was, don’t you? At last Cyril said—

they are conversant, into an object for the conceptive faculty. The narratives they leave us cannot,

therefore, be very comprehensive in their range. Herodotus, Thucydides, Guieciardini, may be

taken as fair samples of the class in this respect. What is present and living in their environment, is

their proper material. The influences that have formed the writer are identical with those which

have moulded the events that constitute the matter of his story. The author's spirit, and that of the

actions he narrates, is one and the same. He describes scenes in which he himself has been an

actor, or at any rate an interested spectator. It is short periods of time, individual shapes of

persons and occurrences, single unreflected traits, of which be makes his picture. And his aim is