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the nations together, to consider them in reference to one and the same great action, and in reference to one another; to trace their growth and decline, to see what great truths they have neglected, what laws they have broken, what opportunities they have lost. We may see how their pride, or presumption, or tyranny, have been followed by punishment; how their love of right, of truth, of liberty has been rewarded. Sum it all up, and, though we may be sometimes at a loss to vindicate God's justice in the case of individual men, in the case of nations there is no difficulty. There crimes and sins work out their visible consequences; there honesty and virtue are always in the end rewarded; there the neglected talent is taken away; there, without any exception to the rule, faithfulness in few things is rewarded with the trust of many things. So far then is history from being an obscure, vague, uncertain page in the book of knowledge, it is a most faithful and unerring record; it is a revelation of the laws of the Unseen God, which like Himself are perfect, eternal, and immutable.

I might confirm these observations by a special instance— by an application of this method to any one of those epochs which I have pointed out. But I have already trespassed long upon your patience, and I am anxious to conclude this lecture by one remark. I warned you at the commencement of it against interpreting the history of other nations by your own predilections or principles or faith as Englishmen exclusively. I did not mean that you were to put off your nature, and study history as if you had no such personality. Quite otherwise: men must study themselves first, and all that is English is to an Englishman the greatest aid to help him in the puzzles which he will be sure to meet; and if he neglect to study history as an Englishman-supposing that were possible-he would deprive himself of the greatest light which the history of his own country affords for the

understanding of history generally. Consider this island in its position'a swan's nest in a silver sea'—an island, isolated and yet set near the mainland, jealously watching and working out its own independence, permitting no foreign interference, and yet continually, by God's blessing, not suffered to sink into selfish bigotry or sullen independence, but compelled to take a prominent part in all Continental movements. This is a type of its history; it is this which gives that history so much value. In it you have the history of an individual nation; but you have, besides, a reflex in it of all that greatly interests or changes Europe. You see, too, how those general questions are affecting its character as a nation. In other words, you have a great drama worked out on this favoured soil, of which the chief character is England. For the main events of history in general, but still more for the clearer understanding of those events in their bearings upon nations and upon men, there is no history, no study, which can serve your purpose so well as the careful study of the history of your own country. There are other reasons why English history demands this of you, especially as it is illustrated by an uninterrupted lamp -I mean its literature. But these considerations I have not time to pursue at present. We have already skimmed an immense space. Will you permit me to hope that my task has not been altogether unprofitable?

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ON THE STUDY OF ENGLISH HISTORY.

I PROPOSE to address some remarks to you this evening on a very wide and difficult subject, almost too wide and too difficult, I am inclined to think, for us to be talking about on Saturday night, of all nights in the week; for you have been working hard all the week, and so have I; and instead, therefore, of trying to find out a method for working harder, and grappling with so tough a subject as the Study of English History, we might fairly be excused if we had devoted this hour to some lighter and more enlivening pursuit. One hears a great deal of talk just now of the Martyrs of Science.' I believe there have been more books than one put out under that head. But the truest Martyrs to Science, I conceive, are working men, who, after labouring hard all day with their hands, come and lay their heads together here of an evening, above all on a Saturday evening; and above that, if it be possible, over English History. Doing this may, I think, be justly called the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties-a sort of Saturday-evening martyrdom.

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I have a very conscientious respect for your feelings and my own; and I am quite aware that I ought not by any adventitious dulness and prosiness of mine to add to the gravity of your task, as I feel I inevitably shall do. At the same time the blame is not entirely mine. You will be pleased to lay some portion of it-I don't mean of my prosi

A lecture delivered at the Working Men's College, Great Ormond Street.

ness, but that I am here in the place of better men-on the broad shoulders of our friend Mr. Shorter. I have the satisfaction to think that if I am here to-night to speak on the Study of English History, a good share of the responsibility rests upon your secretary.

You are aware that a great deal of discussion has of late taken place on this subject, and that gentlemen who have lectured within these walls have borne a distinguished part in the controversy. The question in dispute is whether history is tied down by any such fixed and positive laws as those which regulate the material universe. The discovery of certain great laws (as they are called) in physics has given to natural philosophy a steady progress and development, not so apparent in other branches of knowledge-not for instance, in history. Has history its laws, like astronomy, chemistry, and geology? Can it be reduced to a science as they are? Can we get at these laws, and so attain to some sure and certain method for the study of it, instead of floating about in a maze of facts and vague generalities? It seems, say the advocates of this notion, that human progress follows certain laws. History, therefore, as a record of that progress, must be employed in illustrating those laws, must follow those laws; and all that the enlightened historian has to do is to look out for those laws, and they will determine his method.

Well, no doubt, if there were any such laws for history, it would be very useful if they could be found out and applied. We might then hope to find one universal method for the study of history, just as we find in the physical sciences. I should not be here groping about in the twilight to find a method for studying history and recommending it to you as a great discovery. And you, had you more patience in hearing me than even you now have, would hardly come to listen. We should both have taken for granted that

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the laws of history once discovered would have left us nothing else to do except to accept and apply them. All honour, say I, to those who have entered this thorny fieldwho believe that history has its fixed and unerring laws— and that these laws are to be discovered and followed. I have so long felt the difficulty myself-so long have I been perplexed, and so no doubt have some of you, with the difficulty and uncertainty attending on all historical studies, that we should gladly pay all homage to the man who could find out for us the laws of history and a sure and scientific method for the study of it. I think you and I would do him as much honour as Plato proposed to do to the poets in his model republic. We would reverence him as a sacred, wonderful, and gracious man;' we would pour myrrh upon his head and place on him a crown. But not, as Plato, would we beg of him to go out of our city; rather we should say to him: Oh! generous man, you must lecture to us, not on Saturday evenings only, but on every evening of the week!' At the same time, when he professed to have discovered the laws of history, he must tell us the laws. We could not allow him, you and I, to go on speculating on the laws of history, and giving us his speculations for the laws themselves. If he had found the laws and was sure about them, then the laws by all means; if not, we can't take theories in the place of them-that would only add to our difficulties and perplexities. With such a man we should have to do after all what Plato did with his poet; and tell him our College was too grave and severe a place for him.

Well then, until the divine man comes who shall have found out the laws of history, as Newton did the laws of motion, I am afraid we must go by the old beaten road, and get at the laws of history by studying the facts of history. There seems no other way. If, when this controversy be ended, it is decided by competent judges that history has its

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