udy of history.]
When we begin in childhood the study of history we are attracted
chiefly by anecdotes of heroes and their battles, kings and their
courts, how the Spartans fought at Thermopylae, how Alfred let the
cakes burn, how Henry VIII. beheaded his wives, how Louis XIV. used to
live at Versailles. It is quite right that we should be interested in
such personal details, the more so the better; for history has been
made by individual men and women, and until we have understood the
character of a great many of those who have gone before us, and how
they thought and felt in their time, we have hardly made a fair
beginning in the study of history. The greatest historians, such as
Freeman and Mommsen, show as lively an interest in persons as in
principles; and I would not give much for the historical theories of a
man who should declare himself indifferent to little personal details.

[Sidenote: It is full of practical lessons;]
Some people, however, never outgrow the child's notion of history
as merely a mass of pretty anecdotes or stupid annals, without any
practical bearing upon our own every-day life. There could not be a
greater mistake. Very little has happened in the past which has not
some immediate practical lessons for us; and when we study history
in order to profit by the experience of our ancestors, to find out
wherein they succeeded and wherein they failed, in order that we may
emulate their success and avoid their errors, then history becomes the
noblest and most valuable of studies. It then becomes, moreover, an
arduous pursuit, at once oppressive and fascinating from its endless
wealth of material, and abounding in problems which the most diligent
student can never hope completely to solve.

[Sidenote: and helpful to those who would be good citizens.]
[Sidenote: Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.]
Few people have the leisure to undertake a systematic and thorough
study of history, but every one ought to find time to learn the
principal features of the governments under which we live, and to get
some inkling of the way in which these governments have come into
existence and of the causes which have made them what they are. Some
such knowledge is necessary to the proper discharge of the duties of
citizenship. Political questions, great and small, are perpetually
arising, to be discussed in the newspapers and voted on at the polls;
and it is the duty of every man and woman, young or old, to try