Samuel Rawson Gardiner

The more of a student he is—and no one can be a historian without being a very devoted student—the more he is removed from that intimate contact with men of all classes and of all modes of thought, from which the statesman derives by far …

The statesman uses his imagination to predict the result of changes to be produced in the actually existing state of society, either by the natural forces which govern it, or by his own action. The historian uses his imagination in tracing …

To the historian no more interesting period can be found than one in which men of virtue and ability strove with one another in seeking the solution of the highest problems at a time when the old chain of precedent had been violently …