EPILOGUE

Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity, —SHELLEY

We may not conclude this Brief Survey of Human History
without pointing out its limitations. We had started on this
great task with the ambition ' to hold the mirror up to the
whole pageant of man's life, and not merely to chronide his
political career/ We had said that ' Political history may
form the basis, or rather supply the bony skeleton of our
treatment, but it must be clothed with the flesh and blood
of all-sided human activity, and animated by the indefati-
gable aspirations of man/ If the accomplishment has been
less than this aspiration, the Reader will not also forget that
Life is larger, deeper, greater, than even the most voluminous
History can envisage. Hence we had necessarily, inevitably,
to confine our attention to what appeared to be the most
* significant —though the choice of the significant must vary
with the point-of-view of each writer of History. As Macau-
lay said : ' History has its foreground and its background,
and it is principally in the management of its perspective
that one artist differs from another. Some events must be
represented on a large scale, others diminished; the great
majority will be lost in the dimness of the horizon, and a
general idea of their joint effect must be given by a few light
touches/ But this is not without advantage. For, as
Lamartine put it,' Providence conceals itself in the details of
human affairs, but becomes unveiled in the generalities of