a mass of disorderly facts under
some scheme that produces a definite impression. Otherwise Walpole's
style was clear, level, and straightforward; with no pretence to be
ornamental. Perhaps the best example of his talent for well-ordered
and compact narrative is found in two chapters of the fifth volume of
the History, which contain an excellent summary of the rise and
expansion of British dominion in India during the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, with a very correct appreciation of the causes
and circumstances to which that memorable episode in the annals of the
British Empire is due.

Walpole lived just long enough to bring his historical work, which
occupied him for about thirty years, to the end which he had assigned
to it. In traversing such an extensive and varied field of arduous
labour some errors and shortcomings were inevitable, for the history
of England in the nineteenth century is the history of the British
Empire at its climacteric, of moral and material changes and
developments more numerous and perhaps more important than in any
former century. Nor did he limit his survey to the particular period
that he had chosen; for his theory, as he has stated it, of the
function of history, was that it shall not merely catalogue events but
shall go back to an analysis of their causes, and of the general
progress of the human family. He believed, with Lord Acton, that the
recent past contained the key to the present time. It has been said
that Walpole undertook to do for the nineteenth century what Lecky did
for the eighteenth century: and we may agree that both historians have
filled up, with distinguished merit and ability, large vacant spaces
in the history of our country. Perhaps Lecky had more of the
philosophic mind, while the distance of time that lay between that
writer and his period enabled him to see men and things in their true
proportion, and to judge of events by their outcome. Walpole, on the
other hand, wrote under the disadvantages as well as the advantages of
close proximity to the scenes which he described; and the conclusion
of his history marks the fall of the curtain on a drama of which the
final acts are still to be played out.

FOOTNOTES:

[54] _Proceedings of the British Academy_, vol. iii.

REMARKS ON THE READING OF HISTORY[55]

Since I have accepted, at the request of your Warden, the honour of
delivering an inaugural address on this occasion, it has appeared to
me a