text:  They forget that it is this very complication which renders history in general so uninviting and acceptable (compared with romance) to so limited a circle of readers; and that the annals of actual events then only approach to the interest of fiction when their surpassing magnitude or the importance of the characters involved in them justifies the historian in suspending for a time the thread of inconsiderable and uninteresting incidents and throwing a broad and bright light similar to that of imagination on the few which have been attended with great and lasting effects