t he would never have for a moment entertained the thought
of departing by one iota from strict historical truth in order to
further any political cause in which he was interested. Mr. Gooch says,
"He regarded history as not only primarily, but almost exclusively, a
record of political events. Past politics, he used to say, were present
history." Why is it, therefore, that his works are little read, and that
they have exercised but slight influence on the opinions of the mass of
his countrymen? The answer is supplied by Mr. Gooch. Freeman ignored
organic evolution. "The world of ideas had no existence for him.... No
less philosophic historian has ever lived." For one man who, with
effort, has toiled through Freeman's ponderous but severely accurate
Norman and Sicilian histories, there are probably a hundred whose
imagination has been fired by Carlyle's rhapsody on the French
Revolution, or who have pored with interested delight over Froude's
account of the death of Cranmer.

Much the same may be said of Creighton's intrinsically valuable but
somewhat colourless work. "He had no theories," Mr. Gooch says, "no
philosophy of history, no wish to prove or disprove anything." He took
historical facts as they came, and recorded them. "When events are
tedious," he wrote, "we must be tedious."

The most meritorious, as also the most popular historians are probably
those of the didactic school. Of these, Seeley and Acton are notable
instances. Seeley always endeavoured to establish some principle which
would capture the attention of the student and might be of interest to
the statesman. He held that "history faded into mere literature when it
lost sight of its relation to practical politics." Acton, who brought
his encyclopaedic learning to bear on the defence of liberty in all its
forms, "believed that historical study was not merely the basis of all
real insight into the present, but a school of virtue and a guide to
life."

Limitations of space preclude any adequate treatment of the illuminating
work done by Ranke, whom Mr. Gooch regards as the nearest approximation
the world has yet known to the "ideal historian"; by Lecky, who was
driven by the Home Rule conflict from the ranks of historians into those
of politicians; by Milman, whose style, in the opinion of Macaulay, was
wanting in grace and colour, but who was distinguished for his
"soundness of judgment and inexorable love of truth"; by Otfried Mueller,
Berard, Gilber