Excerpt from Biographia Borealis, or Lives of Stinguished Northerns

Frail and corrupt as human nature is, it is by no means so hateful, so utterly forsaken of Heaven, as the transactions of kingdoms and republics (there is little difference between the two) would incline us to think. The best part, even of the most conspicuous characters, is that which makes the least shew and the least noise. And after all, the history of nations is only the history of a small portion of the life of a very few men.

We cannot be supposed to censure the study of history: we only wish it to be properly balanced by studies which tend to keep the eye of man upon his own heart, upon the sphere of his immediate duties, of those duties, where his affections are to be exercised and regulated, and which, considering man as a person, consider him as sentient, intelligent, moral, and immortal. For simply to think of a man as a sentient being, is incon sistent with that hard-hearted policy which would employ him, reckless of his suffering or enjoyment, like a wedge or a rivet, to build up the idol temple of a false national greatness; to regard him as intelligent, or rather as capable of intelligence, condemns the system that would keep him in ignorance to serve the purposes of his rulers, as game cocks are penned up in the dark that they may fight the better; to regard him as moral, corrects the primary conception of national prosperity; and to revere him as immortal, commands peremptorily that he shall never be made a tool or instrument to any end in which his own permanent welfare is not included.

It is in all these capacities that the biographer considers his subjects. He speaks of actions, not as mere links in the concatenation of events, but as the issues of a responsible will. He endeavours to place himself at the exact point, in relation to general objects, in which his subject was placed, and to see things as he saw them - not, indeed, neglecting to avail himself of the vantage ground which time or circumstances may have given him to correct what was delusive in the partial aspect, but never forgetting, while he exposes the error, to explain its cause.

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