many years of his life, has been
engaged in the study of English history could hardly do better than
devote the time at his disposal to-night to a few reflections on the
political value of history, and on the branches and methods of
historical study that are most fitted to form a sound political
judgment.

Is history a study of real use in practical, and especially in
political, life? The question, as you know, has been by no means
always answered in the same way. In its earlier stages history was
regarded chiefly as a form of poetry recording the more dramatic
actions of kings, warriors, and statesmen. Homer and the early
ballads are indeed the first historians of their countries, and long
after Homer one of the most illustrious of the critics of antiquity
described history as merely 'poetry free from the incumbrance of
verse.' The portraits that adorned it gave some insight into human
character; it breathed noble sentiments, rewarded and stimulated noble
actions, and kindled by its strong appeals to the imagination high
patriotic feeling; but its end was rather to paint than to guide, to
consecrate a noble past than to furnish a key for the future; and the
artist in selecting his facts looked mainly for those which could
throw the richest colour upon his canvas. Most experience was in his
eyes (to adopt an image of Coleridge) like the stern light of a ship,
which illuminates only the path we have already traversed; and a large
proportion of the subjects which are most significant as illustrating
the true welfare and development of nations were deliberately rejected
as below the dignity of history. The old conception of history can
hardly be better illustrated than in the words of Savage Landor. 'Show
me,' he makes one of his heroes say, 'how great projects were
executed, great advantages gained, and great calamities averted. Show
me the generals and the statesmen who stood foremost, that I may bend
to them in reverence.... Let the books of the Treasury lie closed as
religiously as the Sibyl's. Leave weights and measures in the
market-place; Commerce in the harbour; the Arts in the light they
love; Philosophy in the shade. Place History on her rightful throne,
and at the sides of her Eloquence and War.'[1]

It was chiefly in the eighteenth century that a very different
conception of history grew up. Historians then came to believe that
their task was not so much to paint a picture as to solve a problem;
to explain o