One other word. It has been suggested to us that in inviting Notes,
Comments, and Emendations upon the works of Macaulay, Hallam, and other
living authors, we may possibly run a risk of offending those eminent
men. We hope not. We are sure that this outght not to be the case. Had
we not recognised the merits of such works, and the influence they were
destined to exercise over men's minds, we should not have opened our
pages for the purpose of receiving, much less have invited, corrections
of the mistakes into which the most honest and the most able of literary
inquirers must sometimes fall. Only those who have meddled in historical
research can be aware of the extreme difficulty, the all but
impossibility, of ascertaining the exact or the whole truth, amidst the
numerous minute and often apparently contradictory facts which present
themselves to the notice of all inquirers. In this very number a
correspondent comments upon an inference drawn by Mr. Hallam from a
passage in Mabillon. In inserting such a communication we show the
respect we feel for Mr. Hallam, and our {50} sense of the services which
he has rendered to historical knowledge. Had we believed that if he has
fallen into a mistake in this instance, it had been not merely a
mistake, but a deliberate perversion of the truth, we should have
regarded both book and writer with indifference, not to say with
contempt.
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