DRAMATIC INTEREST. [V. and I think that in our present scheme we hold out to the student the clue which he has to follow in order to succeed; for both in the study of the general period, and in that of the continuous history of his own country, he will find the dramatic interest strong and capable of almost infinite illustration. More especially if he can throw himself personally into the action of it ; not merely regarding it as a.n image, or a picture, or a piece of biography, but as part of the growth of his own life, of the laws, history, circumstances, that have helped to make him what he is ; acts that have taken place in scenes with which he is familiar, great deeds of war and peace done- by the men whose blood runs in his own veins ; high aspirations, sympathies and instincts, that he knows are living in his own heart and brain, not merely by imitation or engrafted, life, but with continuous, hereditary strength. I would not have him read as a partisan, with the likes and dislikes,, the prejudices, the false and artificial antipathies of modern, political life, but with the sympathies of an Englishman ; I would have my brother Yorkshireman, for instance, learn to look on Fairfax and on Strafford both as men of flesh and blood, with beliefs, sincerities and virtues that bring them very near to us, notwithstanding their antagonism to, each other, and the gap that widens daily between us and both of them. I ani sure that the more I know of both, of them, the more I find that is admirable and loveable in them. But perhaps it is easier to grow enthusiastic here than to maintain judicial calmness; and I will proceed. There is yet. another way of reading and of writing history which demands its place in our enumeration, which, however, can scarcely be regarded as educational, because the historic faculty, whatever it is, must have been already educated before it can attempt to approach the task. Τ α