may not weaken our reliance on the general truthfulness of the narrative. In this respect he contrasts favourably not only with Bede, but with Roger de Wendover and most other chroniclers, not excepting his illustrious contemporary William of Malmesbury. His frequent references to the immediate interposition of Providence may be unsuited to the taste of many readers of the present day, but it must not be forgotten, that while he sometimes claims the divine interference for very questionable objects, he generally takes just views of the human means employed in working out the dispensations of Providence.
Approaching his own times, our author assumes the character of an original historian, and, at the commencement of his seventh Book, tells us that now he has to deal with events which had passed under his own observation, or which had been related to him by eye-witnesses. Still, however, the Saxon Chronicle seems to have been the basis of his History for the reign of William II., although additional matter is frequently introduced. But the latter part of the seventh, and the whole of the eighth Book, containing the reigns of Henry I. and Stephen, are more valuable, the author having been contemporary with the events he describes, and possessing singular opportunities of being well informed on all that passed, from his familiar intercourse with Bishops Bloet and Alexander de Blois, the nephew of Roger Bishop of Salisbury, the greatest statesmen of the time; as well as from his personal knowledge of many other eminent characters, as we learn from his "Letter to Walter."
Borrowing large portions of his materials from the Chronicles, it was natural that Huntingdon's History, which Matthew of Westminster, indeed, calls "his Chronicles," should partake of the same character. Although the science of history may be considered as then in a transition state, Henry of Huntingdon has the merit of being among the earliest of our national Historians, as distinguished from Chroniclers. The skeleton of history now began to be invested with consistency of form and propoitions, the scattered limbs to be united, and life breathed into the dry bones. Political changes were traced to their origin,
