The same plan is to be pursued with reference to modern history.  The brilliant detached histories of Voltaire, Louis XIV. and XV., Charles XII., and Peter the Great, ought to be read while the outlines of the general history of the same period are freshly impressed on your memory.  The vivid historical pictures of De Barante are to be made the same use of:  he stands perhaps unrivalled as an objective historian.

Shakspeare’s historical plays are the best accompaniment to Hume’s History of England.  Our modern novels, too, will supply you with rich and varied information, as to the manners and characters of former times.  They are a very important part of our literature, and ought to be considered essential to the completion of your circle of study.  That they also may be rendered as useful as possible, they should be read at the same time with the entirely true history of the period to which they refer.

From history, I have insensibly glided into the subject of works of fiction, one which perhaps previously requires a few words of apology; for the strong recommendations with which I have pressed their study upon you may sound strangely to the ears of many worthy people.  In your own enlightened and liberal mind, I do not indeed suspect the indwelling of any such exclusive prejudices as those which forbid altogether the perusal of works of fiction:  such prejudices belong, perhaps, to more remote periods, to those distant times when title-pages were seen announcing “Paradise Lost, translated into prose for the benefit of those pious souls whose consciences would not permit them to read poetry."[81] This latter prejudice—­that against poetry—­seems, as far as my observation extends, to be entirely forgotten.  Fiction in this form is now considered universally allowable; and some conscientious persons, who would not allow themselves or others the relaxation of a novel of any kind, will indulge unhesitatingly in the same sort of love-stories, rendered still more exciting through the medium of poetry.  Most women, unfortunately, are incapable of carrying out the argument from one course of action into another, or even of clearly comprehending, when it is suggested to them, that whatever is wrong in prose cannot be right in poetry.  In a general way you will be able to form your own judgment on this subject, by observing how much safer prose-fiction is for yourself at times, when your feelings are excited, and your mind unsettled and exhausted.  A novel, even the most trifling novel of fashionable life, if it has only cleverness sufficient to engage your thoughts, would be, perhaps, a very desirable manner of spending your time at the very period that poetry would be decidedly injurious to you.  Indeed, at all times, those who have vivid imaginations and strong feelings should carefully guard and sparingly indulge themselves in the perusal of poetic fictions.