on political, economic, or social questions.  For so fallible is human nature that the proclivities of the individual can rarely be entirely submerged by the judicial impartiality of the historian.  It is impossible to peruse Mr. Gooch’s work without being struck by the fact that, amongst the greatest writers of history, bias—­often unconscious bias—­has been the rule, and the total absence of preconceived opinions the exception.  Generally speaking, the subjective spirit has prevailed amongst historians in all ages.  The danger of following the scent of analogies—­not infrequently somewhat strained analogies—­between the present and the past is comparatively less imminent in cases where some huge upheaval, such as the French Revolution, has inaugurated an entirely new epoch, accompanied by the introduction of fresh ideals and habits of thought.  It is, as Macaulay has somewhere observed, a more serious stumbling-block in the path of a writer who deals with the history of a country like England, which has through long centuries preserved its historical continuity.  Hallam and Macaulay viewed history through Whig, and Alison through Tory spectacles.  Neither has the remoteness of the events described proved any adequate safeguard against the introduction of bias born of contemporary circumstances.  Mitford, who composed his history of Greece during the stormy times of the French Revolution, thought it compatible with his duty as an historian to strike a blow at Whigs and Jacobins.  Grote’s sympathy with the democracy of Athens was unquestionably to some extent the outcome of the views which he entertained of events passing under his own eyes at Westminster.  Mommsen, by inaugurating the publication of the Corpus of Latin Inscriptions, has earned the eternal gratitude of scholarly posterity, but Mr. Gooch very truly remarks that his historical work is tainted with the “strident partisanship” of a keen politician and journalist.  Truth, as the old Greek adage says, is indeed the fellow-citizen of the gods; but if the standard of historical truth be rated too high, and if the authority of all who have not strictly complied with that standard is to be discarded on the ground that they stand convicted of partiality, we should be left with little to instruct subsequent ages beyond the dry records of men such as the laborious, the useful, though somewhat over-credulous Clinton, or the learned but arid Marquardt, whose “massive scholarship” Mr. Gooch dismisses somewhat summarily in a single line.  Such writers are not historians, but rather compilers of records, upon the foundations of which others can build history.