I might here entertain my Reader with Historical Remarks on this idle profligate People, [who ] infest all the Countries of Europe, and live in the midst of Governments in a kind of Commonwealth by themselves.

But enough of that: the historical fact is that Settlers' Clubs did work of this sort all over Iowa in those times, and right or wrong, the pioneers held to the lands they took up when the great tide of the Republic broke over the Mississippi and inundated Iowa.

Among the causes of confusion in thought upon religion, Mr. Tylor mentions 'the partial and one-sided application of the historical method of inquiry into theological doctrines.

Both elements are found co-existing, in almost all races, and nobody, in our total lack of historical information about the beginnings, can say which, if either, element is the earlier, or which, if either, is derived from the other.

Now, this distinction is often calmly ignored; whereas, when any race has developed (like late Scandinavians) the Euhemeristic hypothesis ('all gods were once men'), that hypothesis is accepted as an historical statement of fact by some writers.

As far as we can say, in the inevitable absence of historical evidence, the highest gods of savages may have been believed in, as Makers and Fathers and Lords of an indeterminate nature, before the savage had developed the idea of souls out of dreams and phantasms.

But, as we almost always find ghosts and a Supreme Being together, where we find either, among the lowest savages, we have no historical ground for asserting that either is prior to the other.

There is no intention of presenting merely a mass of historical material, however important it is in its place, which is commonly of the sort that people recommend others to read and do not read themselves.

The oldest historical records are found in Egypt and Babylonia, and each of these lands has its advocates, who claim for it priority in culture.

The prose pieces, with scarcely an exception, belong to the historical period, and may be dated with something like accuracy.

The legend of Dibbarra seems to have a historical basis.

But there is no digested historical narrative, which gives a clear picture of the general civil and political situation, or any analysis of the characters of kings, generals, and governors, or any inquiry into causes of events.

One of the most interesting collections of historical pieces is that recently discovered at Amarna.

Though he wrote in Greek (he lived in the time of Alexander the Great), and was probably trained in the Greek learning of his time, his work doubtless represents the spirit of Babylonian historical writing.

So far as can be judged from the remains which have come down to us, its style is of the annalistic sort which appears in the old inscriptions and in the historical books of the Bible.

The Assyrian and Babylonian historical inscriptions, covering as they do the whole period of Jewish history down to the capture of Babylon by Cyrus, are of very great value for the illustration of the Old Testament.

The latter is tempered in him with inherited self-control, the moderation of judgment bred by wide historical knowledge, and a pervasive atmosphere of literary good-breeding which constantly substitutes allusive irony for crude statement, the rapier for the tomahawk.

So taken, the reader who loves historical fights and seriously desires truth should read the chapters on the Hartford Convention and its preliminaries side by side with the corresponding pages in Henry Cabot Lodge's 'Life of George Cabot.'

He follows the latest historical canons as to giving authorities.

Indeed, so complicated and so historical had the causes of war become that no one even in America could explain or understand them, while Englishmen could see only that America required England as the price of peace to destroy herself by abandoning her naval power, and that England preferred to die fighting rather than to die by her own hand.

As an historical writer, it has been my function to deal with times of conflict in various periods and lands.

HISTORICAL PREFACE, INCLUDING A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR.

Thus nobly descended and connected, so singularly unfortunate, and her fate so afflicting and disastrous, it is no wonder that the novelist pointed her pen to record, with historical accuracy, a destiny so fearful, a career so terrible.

Since so much of the romance here following is truth, veritable truth, it is to be regretted that any error of historical character was suffered to assume importance in the narrative.

But to the quotation, which, with the above remarks, the reader would find pertinent to time and place had he turned over the historical pages having a bearing on this romance which I have.