I am sure that he will not have failed from forgetting
them. He has, I believe, faithfully studied all the documents of
the period within his reach, making little use of modern narratives;
he has meditated upon the past in its connection with the present;
has never allowed his reading to become dry by disconnecting it with
what he has seen and felt, or made his partial experiences a measure
for the acts which they help him to understand. He has entered upon
his work at least in a true and faithful spirit, not regarding it as
an amusement for leisure hours, but as something to be done
seriously, if done at all; as if he was as much 'under the Great
Taskmaster's eye' in this as in any other duty of his calling. In
certain passages and scenes he seemed to me to have been a little
too bold for the taste and temper of this age. But having written
them deliberately, from a conviction that morality is in peril from
fastidiousness, and that it is not safe to look at questions which
are really agitating people's hearts merely from the outside--he
has, and I believe rightly, retained what I should from cowardice
have wished him to exclude.
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