Every one perusing the pages of the historians must have been impressed with the graphic and singularly penetrative character of many of the sketches of the distinguished persons whose doings form the staple of history. In making the selections, the primary object was to secure, in each instance, the most vivid and truthful portrait obtainable, but it was also thought desirable to render the volume as representative of historical literature as possible, and hence to include a wide range of writers. The work will be found to be tolerably representative in this particular, but some well-known historians do not appear, for the reason that their methods did not yield suitable material.

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