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ought not to admit any portraits into his work but those of thegreatest persons, and such as are principally interested, and have Ithe chief hand in affairs, and these must be real, natural, and truly |resembling their originals; expressive of their genius, the qualities !of the head and heart, rather than descriptive of the external form jof his personages. When such are finished with a masterly hand, jwith true judgement and success, they are not only great orna- jnients and embellishments in history, but of use to strip the hearts ;of men of their disguises, to lay open all their secret folds, and !disclose the real springs of actions. It is a great fault in an histo- jriographer to abound too much in reflections of his own ; he there- 1fore must not turn philosopher or moralist indiflerently upon all !occasions; for every man desires to be free in his judgement of ithe facts represented to him, and the consequences he is to drawfrom them, in which consists the greatest pleasure of the reader. |But if an author should throw in, cr mingle reflections of his own, j

with his story, they most be such as arise naturally from the sub.ject, and contain a great and noble sense in a few words; tiieymust not be too finely spun or studied, nor have more brightnessthan solidity, but appear rather to be the reasoning of a wise states-man than the affectation of a declaimer; nor must they be toofreciuent, or too loose and disjointed, but be enamelled in thebody of the work. Digressions, if made with judgement, and nottoo wide and foreign from the subject, have also their proper graceand ornament in history ; as they give an agreeable variety to thenarration, and relieve the mind ot the reader ; but they must beintroduced by the historian with an artful hand and great address;they must bear an alliance and connection with the purport of thehistory, and their length must be proport ionably greater oy less, asthey are more nearly or remotely allied to the capital point pf thystory,

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END OF VOLUME II.