s.
Without knowing the Catholic Church from within, it is impossible to
conceive of all these things as realities affecting conscience and the
purpose and direction of life; their significance is lost if they have
to be explained as the mere human struggle for supremacy of persons or
classes, mere ecclesiastical disputes, or dreams of imperialism in
Church matters. Take away the Church and try to draw up a course of
lessons satisfactory to the minds even of girls under eighteen, and at
every turn a thoughtful question may be critical, and the explanations
in the hands of a non-Catholic teacher scarcely less futile than the
efforts of old Kaspar to satisfy "young Peterkin" about the battle of
Blenheim.

What about Investitures?

"Now tell us all about the war,
And what they fought each other for?"

What about Canossa?

"What they fought each other for,
I could not well make out.
But everybody said" quoth he,
"That 'twas a famous victory."

What about Mentana or Castel-Fidardo?
"What good came of it at last?"
Quoth little Peterkin.
"Why that I cannot tell," said he,
"But 'twas a famous victory."

The difficulty is tacitly acknowledged by the rare appearance of
European history in the curriculum for non-Catholic girls' schools. But
in any school where the studies are set to meet the requirements of
examinations, the teaching of history is of necessity dethroned from the
place which belongs to it by right. History deserves a position that is
central and commanding, a scheme that is impressive when seen as a whole
in retrospect, it deserves to be taught from a point of view which has
not to be reconsidered in later years, and this is to be found with all
the stability possible, and with every facility for later extension in
the natural arrangement of all modern history round the history of the
Church.

During the great development which has taken place in the study of
history within the last century, and especially within the last fifty
years, the mass of materials has grown so enormous and the list of
authors of eminence so imposing that one might almost despair of
adapting the subject in any way to a child's world if it were not for
this central point of view, in which the Incarnation and the Church are
the controlling facts dominating all others and giving them their due
place and proportion. On this commanding point of observation the child
and the historian