Essays on the teaching of history

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The Teaching of History

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Essays on the

Teaching of History

By F. W. MAITLAND,
H. M. GWATKIN,
R. L. POOLE,
W. E. HEITLAND,
TV. CUNNINGHAM,
J. R. TANNER,
W. H. WOODWARD,
C. H. K. MARTEN,
W. J. ASHLEY.

CAMBRIDGE, at the University Press, 1901.

Catnimljge:

PRINTED BY J. AND C. F. CLAY,
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

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PREFATORY NOTE.

PHE Syndics of the University Press confided the
oversight of this collection of Essays to Lord
Acton and myself. An Introduction by Lord Acton
was to have been included but his unfortunate illness
prevented this part of the arrangement from being
carried out. Professor Maitland, under circumstances
which make our obligation to him the greater, has
kindly written the Introduction.

I may be permitted to thank the contributors for
kindness which has made the mechanical part which
I have performed such a pleasant one.

W. A. J. ARCHBOLD.

Cambridge.
September, 1901.

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Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2007 with funding from

Microsoft Corporation

http://www.archive.org/details/essaysonteachingOOarchiala

CONTENTS.

PAGE

Introduction ix-xx

By F. W. Maitland, LL.D., Downing Professor of the
Laws of England in the University of Cambridge.

The teaching of Ecclesiastical History ... i

By the Rev. H. M. Gwatkin, M.A., Dixie Professor of
Ecclesiastical History in the University of Cambridge.

The teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic . n
By R. L. Poole, M.A., Fellow of Magdalen College and
Reader in Diplomatic in the University of Oxford.

The teaching of Ancient History . . . . 31
By W. E. Heitland, M.A., Fellow of St John's College,
Cambridge.

The teaching of Economic History .... 40
By the Rev. W. Cunningham, D.D., Fellow and
Lecturer of Trinity College, Cambridge.

The teaching of Constitutional History . . 51
By J. R. Tanner, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of St John's
College, Cambridge.

The teaching of History in Schools — Aims . . 69
By W. H. Woodward, Christchurch, Oxford, Principal
of the University Training College, Liverpool.

viii Contents.

PAGE

The teaching of History in Schools— Practice . 79
By C. H. K. Marten, M.A., Balliol College, Oxford,
Assistant Master at Eton College.

The teaching of History in America ... 92
By W. J. Ashley, M.A., Professor in the Faculty of
Commerce in the University of Birmingham ; late
Professor of Economic History in Harvard University.

INTRODUCTION.

The following essays were to have been ushered into the
world by Lord Acton. That he is unable to perform for them
this good office will be deeply regretted both by their writers
and by their readers. Of what he would have written only this
can be said with certainty, that it would have added greatly
to the value of this book. Still it is not apparent that these
essays, proceeding from men who have had much experience
in the teaching of history, imperatively demand any intro-
duction. A few words about a matter of which the essayists
have not spoken nor been called upon to speak, namely,
about the history of the teaching of history in the English
universities, are all that seem necessary, and may be suffered
to come from one who can look at schools of history from the
outside.

The tale need not be long, and indeed could not be long
unless it became minute. The attempt to teach history, if
thereby be meant a serious endeavour to make historical study
one of the main studies of the universities, is very new. We
can admit that it has attained the manly estate of one-and-
twenty years and a little more. But not much more. Some of
those who watched its cradle are still among us, are still active
and still hopeful.

The university of Oxford, it is true, came by a professorship
or readership of ancient history in times that we may well call

x Introduction.

ancient, especially if we remember that only in 1898 did the
university of Cambridge permanently acquire a similar pro-
fessorship. But those ancient times were in some respects
nearer our own than are some times that have intervened. The
professorship at Oxford was established by William Camden in
1622 at the end of a life devoted to history, and the founder
numbered among his friends many eager and accomplished
explorers of the past : Selden and Ussher, Spelman and
Godwin, Savile and Cotton. Much had been done for history,
and more especially for English history, in the age that was
closing: an age that had opened when Matthew Parker set
scholars to work on the history of the English church and was
in correspondence with the Centuriators of Magdeburg. The
political and ecclesiastical questions which had agitated man-
kind had been such as stimulated research in unworked fields.
Learning had been in fashion, and much sound knowledge had
been garnered.

For a moment it seemed probable that Cambridge would
not long be outstripped by Oxford. One of her sons, Fulke
Greville, Lord Brooke, who was murdered in 1628, founded or
endeavoured to found a readership of history, which would
have balanced Camden's foundation. He sought to obtain
Vossius from Leyden, and obtained from Leyden Dorislaus as
an occupant for the chair. After two or three lectures the
lecturer was in trouble. His theme was Roman history and
he said somewhat of the expulsion of kings : a matter of which
it is not always safe to talk at large. That he would take part
in trying an English king for treason he did not foresee, nor the
vengeance that followed, nor the public funeral in Westminster
Abbey, nor the exhumation of bones that polluted a royal
sanctuary. What at the present moment concerns us more is
the loss of an annuity that Lord Brooke meant, so it seems, to
be permanent. Apparently our historians have as yet found

Introduction. xi

no more concrete cause to which they may assign this disaster
than ' the iniquity of the times.' So Oxford had a professor
of ancient history and Cambridge had none. Cambridge, how-
ever, had for a while ' a reader of the Saxon language and of
the history of our ancient British churches ' : two branches
of learning which since Parker's day had been united. The
reader was Abraham Wheelock : he also professed Arabic but
edited ancient English laws. As reader of Saxon he was paid
by Henry Spelman, upon whose death in troublous days (1641)
the endowment lapsed. Opportunities had been lost. The
age of fresh and vigorous research went by. Cambridge should
have had an historical professorship recalling the name of
Parker. A line of professors that began with G. J. Vossius
would have begun famously.

A decline of interest, or at least of academic interest, in
history may be traced by anyone who with a list of the
Camden professors before him seeks for their names in that
Dictionary of National Biography which is among the best
historical products of our own time. During the seventeenth
century the Camden professors were men who in some way or
another left a mark behind them. Degory Wheare, for example,
the first of them, wrote a book on The Method and Order of
Reading Histories : a book that can still be read and such a
book as a professor should sometimes write. Lewis Dumoulin
was a remarkable member of a remarkable family. ' DodwelPs
learning was immense,' said Gibbon. Then, however, there
was a fall. Thomas Hearne, the under librarian at Oxford,
who was a truly zealous student, might, so he said, have filled
the chair if he would have bowed the knee to an usurping
dynasty. Apparently learning and loyalty were not to be
found in combination. Late in the eighteenth century occurs
the name of William Scott, who as Lord Stowell was to ex-
pound law for the nations. His lectures were well attended

xii Introduction.

(so we are told) and were praised by those whose praise was
worth having. His name is followed by that of Thomas
Warton, who had already been professor of poetry. His title
to the one chair and to the other is not to be disputed, at all
events if history is to include the history of literature ; and the
versatile man wrote a history of the parish of Kiddington as
' a specimen of a history of Oxfordshire.' But we need trace
no further the fortunes of ancient history. It might be con-
sidered as a branch of 'the classics' or of 'humane letters,' and
the study of it, though flagging, was likely to revive.

We must turn to speak of a royal benefactor. George I,
the king, whose title to the crown of Great Britain the learned
Hearne would not acknowledge, had 'observed that no en-
couragement or provision had been made in either of the
universities for the study of modern history or modern
languages.' Also he had 'seriously weighed the prejudice
that had accrued to the said universities from this defect,
persons of foreign nations being often employed in the
education and tuition of youth both at home and in their
travels.' It may well have struck His Majesty that, if it was
a defect on his part to speak no English, it was a defect on
the part of his ministers to speak no German. Also it may
have struck him that a knowledge 'rerum Brunsvicensium,'
and, to speak more generally, a knowledge of the Germanic
Body and its none too simple history was not so common in
England as it might reasonably be expected to be in all parts
of His Majesty's dominions. Also it is not impossible that
a prince of that house which had Leibnitz for its historiographer
may have thought that such historiographers as England could
shew hardly reached a creditable standard. So he founded
professorships of modern history at Oxford and Cambridge
(1724). Out of the stipends that were assigned to them the
professors were to provide teachers of the modern languages.

Introduction. xiii

The university of Cambridge, if it wanted learning was not
deficient in loyalty, and effusively thanked the occupier of the
throne for his 'noble design,' his 'princely intentions.' The
masters and scholars 'ventured... to join in the complaint that
foreign tutors had so large a share in the education of our
youth of quality both at home and in their travels.' They
even dared to foresee a glad day when ' there should be a
sufficient number of academical persons well versed in the
knowledge of foreign courts and well instructed in their
respective languages ; when a familiarity with the living
tongues should be superadded to that of the dead ones ;
when the solid learning of antiquity should be adorned and
set off with a skilful habit of conversing in the languages that
now flourish and both be accompanied with English probity ;
when our nobility and gentry would be under no temptation of
sending for persons from foreign countries to be entrusted with
the education of their children; and when the appearance of
an English gentleman in the courts of Europe with a governor
of his own nation would not be so rare and uncommon as it
theretofore had been.'

Such were the phrases with which these representatives of
English learning welcomed the royal gift. This we know ; for if
the university of Cambridge was slow to produce a school of
history, the borough of Cambridge once had for its town clerk
a compiler of admirable annals. The foreigner, we observe,
was to be driven from the educational market, and the English
gentleman was to appear in foreign courts with a ' governor ' of
his own nation : in other words the professor of modern history
was to be the trainer of bear-leaders : the English leaders of
English bears. This being the ideal, it is not perhaps sur-
prising that the man who at that time was doing the best work
that was being done in England as a systematic narrator of
very modern history was the Frenchman Abel Boyer, or that

xiv Introduction.

he should have belonged to the hateful race of foreign tutors.
The remoter history of England might be read in the pages of
M. de Rapin, or, if ' familiarity with the living tongues ' would
not extend so far, then in the translation which Mr Tindal was
about to publish. In academic eyes modern history was to be
an ornamental fringe around ' the solid learning of antiquity.'
As to the wretched middle ages, they, it was well understood,
had been turned over to ' men of a low, unpolite genius fit
only for the rough and barbarick part of learning.' One of
these mere antiquaries had lately written a History of the
Exchequer which has worn better than most books of its time.
Also he had written this sentence : ' In truth, writing of history
is in some sort a religious act.' But the spirit which animated
Thomas Madox was not at home in academic circles.

It may be that some of the regius professors ably performed
the useful task with which they were entrusted. Statistics which
should exhibit the nationality of the tutors who made the grand
tour with young persons of quality would be hard to obtain,
and no unfavourable inference should be drawn from the bare
fact that the professor's mastery of history was seldom attested
by any book that bore his name. Of one we may read that he
is the anonymous author of ' The Country Parson's Advice to
his Parishioners of the Younger Sort ' ; of another that ' he
was killed by a fall from his horse when re turning... from a
dinner with Lord Sandwich at Hinchinbroke.' Macaulay has
said that the author of the Elegy in a Country Churchyard was
in many respects better qualified for the professorship than any
man living. That may be so; but 'the habits of the time
made lecturing unnecessary' (so Mr Leslie Stephen has told
us), and as a teacher of modern history Thomas Gray must be
for us a mute, inglorious potentiality. Historical work was
being done even at Cambridge. David Wilkins published the
collection of English Concilia which still holds the field and

Introduction. xv

edited the Anglo-Saxon laws ; but he, like Wheelock, was
professor of Arabic ; also he was a German and his name was
not Wilkins. To find a square hole for the round man was
apparently the fashion of the time. Conyers Middleton pro-
fessed geology.

If Gibbon learnt much at Oxford he was ungrateful, and
yet he was the only member of the historical • triumvirate ' in
whom an English university could claim anything. Modern
history was at length earning academic honour north of the
Tweed when Robertson reigned at Edinburgh. Hume found
that history was more profitable than philosophy and consumed
less time. His rival in the historical field could in the interval
between Peregrine Pickle and Humphrey Clinker turn out
history at the rate of a century a month ; but he was another
beggarly Scot. The demand for history was increasing; the
notion of history was extending its bounds. Burke began a
history of the laws of England and should have written more
than ten pages. Anderson, another Scot, had compiled a
solid history of British commerce. Dr Coxe of the House of
Austria showed that the travelling tutor might become an
industrious and agreeable historian.

About the beginning of the nineteenth century it became
usual to appoint to the chairs of modern history men who
would take their duties seriously and who either had written or
might be expected to write history of one sort or another.
Thus Prof. William Smyth, of Cambridge, published lectures
that were admired, and Prof. Nares, of Oxford, wrote about
Lord Burleigh a book, which as Macaulay's readers will re-
member, weighed sixty pounds avoirdupois. Thomas Arnold's
name occurs in the Oxford list, and, besides all else that he
did, he introduced the teaching of modern history into a public
school. Nevertheless if we look back at the books that were
being produced during the first half of the century, we must

xvi Introduction.

confess that a remarkably large amount of historical literature
was coming from men who had not been educated at Oxford or
Cambridge. One and the same college might indeed boast of
Macaulay, Hallam, Thirlwall and Kemble. On the other side
stand such names as those of James Mill, Grote, Palgrave,
Lingard, Carlyle, Buckle, Napier; and we must not forget
Sir Archibald Alison and Sharon Turner; still less such
archivists as Petrie and the two Hardys. We cannot say
that any organized academic opinion demanded the work that
was done by the Record Commission, by the Rolls Series, or
by the Historical Manuscripts Commission, or that the uni-
versities cried aloud for the publication of State papers and
the opening of the national archives. But some Niebuhr was
translated and then some Ranke, and it became plain that the
sphere of history was expanding in all directions.

Then the great change came, soon after the middle of
the century. The professors at the two universities were
among the first men that would have been mentioned by any-
one who was asked to give the names of our living historians.
An opportunity of teaching, and of teaching seriously was being
provided for them. Gradually the study of history became
the avenue to an 'honours degree.' It was not among the
first of 'the new studies' that obtained recognition at Cam-
bridge. The moral sciences and the natural sciences took
precedence of it. For a while the moral sciences included a
little history (1851). Then (1858), a small place was found
for it in the Law Tripos. Then for a few years there was a
Law and History Tripos (1870) in which, however, law was
the predominant partner. The dissolution of partnership took
effect in 1875. History was emancipated. A similar change
had been made at Oxford some few years earlier (1872). At
Oxford the class list of the school of Modern History has now
become nearly if not quite the longest of the class lists. In

Introduction. xvii

Cambridge the competition of the natural sciences has been
severer, but the Historical Tripos attracts a number of candi-
dates that is no longer small, and increases. Some new profes-
sorships have been founded. Oxford has two chairs of modern,
one of ancient, one of ecclesiastical history, besides readerships
and lectureships. Cambridge has had a professor of ecclesias-
tical history since 1884, a professor of ancient history since 1898.
Whewell, the historian of inductive science, provided ample
encouragement for the study of international law, which is closely
related to modern history. Scholarships in ' history, and more
especially ecclesiastical history,' were endowed by Lightfoot,
the historian of early Christianity. The establishment of prizes
for historical essays began at Oxford in the middle of the
century when the name of Thomas Arnold was thus comme-
morated. Other prizes came from Lord Stanhope, who in
various ways deserved well of history, and from Lord Lothian.
At this point also Cambridge was somewhat behindhand ; but
the names of the Prince Consort, Thirlwall, and Seeley are
now connected with prizes. A list of successful essays shows
that in not a few cases the offer of an honourable reward has
turned a young man's thoughts to a field in which he has
afterwards done excellent work. It is a cause for rejoicing
that among the teachers of history at the universities there
have been men so justly famous, each in his own way, as
Stubbs, Freeman, Froude, Creighton, Hatch, and Seeley — for
we will name none but the departed — but when all men get
their due a large share of credit will be given to those whose
patient and self-denying labours as tutors and lecturers have
left them little time for the acquisition of such fame as may be
won by great books.

It is, then, of a modern movement and of young schools
that these essays speak to us : of a movement which is yet in
progress : of schools that have hardly outlived that tentative

xviii Introduction.

and experimental stage through which all institutions ought to
pass. We may wish for these schools not only the vigour but
also the adaptability of youth. And, if it be true, as will be
said by others, that there are many reasons why history should
be taught, let it not be forgotten that, whether we like it or no,
history will be written. The number of men in England who
at the present time are writing history of some sort or another
must indeed be very large. Very small may be the number of
those who take the universe or universal mankind for their
theme. Few will be those who aspire so high as the whole life
of some one nation. But many a man is writing the history of
his county, his parish, his college, his regiment, is endeavouring
to tell the tale of some religious doctrine, some form of art or
literature, some economic relationship, or some rule of law.
Or, again, he is writing a life, or he is editing letters. Nor
must we forget the journalists and the history, good, bad, and
indifferent that finds a place in their articles; nor the reviewers
of historical books, who assume to judge and therefore ought
to know.

All this is important work. It has to be done, and
will be done, and it ought to be done well, conscientiously,
circumspectly, methodically. Now it may be that no school of
history can be sure of producing great historians ; and it may
be that when the great historian appears he will perchance
come out of a school of classics or mathematics, or will have
given some years to metaphysics or to physiology. But even
for his sake we should wish that all the departmental work, if
such we may call it, should be thoroughly well performed.
His time should not be wasted over bad texts, ill-arranged
material, or assertions for which no warrantor is vouched. To
help and at any rate not to hinder him should be the hope of
many humble labourers.

That is not all. The huge mass of historical stuff that is

Introduction. xix

now-a-days flowing from the press goes to make the minds of
its writers and of its readers, and indeed to make the mind of
the nation. It is of some moment that mankind should believe
what is true, and disbelieve what is false.

To make Gibbons or Macaulays may be impossible : but it
cannot be beyond the power of able teachers to set in the right
path many of those who, say what we will, are going to write
history well or are going to write it ill. Unquestionably of late
years an improvement has taken place in England ; but still it
is not altogether pleasant to compare English books of what
we will again call departmental or sectional history with the
parallel books that come to us from abroad. When the English
Historical Review was started in 1886 — at J. R. Green's sug-
gestion, so Creighton has told us — England in one important
respect stood behind some small and some backward countries.
'English historians had not yet... associated themselves in the
establishment of any academy or other organisation, nor
founded any journal to promote their common object.' Even
of late Dr Gross has been sending us our bibliographies from
the other side of the Atlantic. More co-operation, more organi-
sation, more and better criticism, more advice for beginners
are needed. And the need if not met will increase. History
is lengthening and widening and deepening. It is lengthening
at both ends, for while modern states in many parts of the
globe are making new history at a bewilderingly rapid rate,
what used to be called ancient history is no longer by any
means the ancientest : Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, and even
primeval man are upon our hands. And history is widening.
Could we neglect India, China and Japan, there would still be
America, Australia, Africa, as well as Europe, demanding that
their stories should be told and finding men to tell them well
or to tell them badly. And history is deepening. We could
not if we would be satisfied with the battles and the protocols,

xx Introduction.

the alliances and the intrigues. Literature and art, religion
and law, rents and prices, creeds and superstitions have burst the
political barrier and are no longer to be expelled. The study
of interactions and interdependences is but just beginning, and
no one can foresee the end. There is much to be done by
schools of history ; there will be more to be done every year.

THE TEACHING OF
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY.

He that will be a teacher of Ecclesiastical History must lay
it to heart that there is neither art nor mystery in the matter
beyond the art and mystery of teaching History in general.
Ecclesiastical History is not an enchanted ground where the
laws of evidence and common sense are left behind, and
partizanship may run riot without blame. It is simply a
department of General History like Political or Social or
Economic History, and differs no more from these and others
than they do from each other. Each of them leans on the
rest, and in its turn throws light on others. The problems of
one are often the answers of another. They all deal with the
same mass of material, for there is meaning for them all in
every single fact which has ever influenced the development of
men in political or other societies : and they all deal with it in
the same way, obtaining their facts by the same methods of
research, and sifting them by the same principles of criticism.
So far they are unreservedly alike ; for the power of life divine
which works in Ecclesiastical History works equally in the
rest, and works in all by natural laws. The difference is only
that each has a different thread to disentangle from the great
coil. Thus facts which are principal to one are often minor
matters to another. Yet be it noted that it is never safe
entirely to ignore the smallest fact, for History in all its length

2 The Teaching of Ecclesiastical History.

and all its breadth is one organic whole, and every single fact
of the entire collection has a bearing of some sort on every
other.

Our chief aims in the practical teaching of History are
three — to rouse interest, to give the guiding facts, and to teach
the principles of research and criticism which enable men not
only to become their own teachers, but to return and see for
themselves how far we rightly gave them the guiding facts.
And these three aims are in their natural order. In the case of
children, we seek chiefly to rouse their interest, though we give
them the simpler guiding facts, and tell them in simple cases
where we get them and how we sift them. Our teaching must
look forward from the first, and lay foundations for the future.
A little further on, the stress falls chiefly on the guiding facts,
though neither of the other aims can be neglected. At a third
stage, even the ripest of our scholars will thank us for keeping
up their interest and giving them fresh guiding facts, though
our chief endeavour will be to teach them the methods of
criticism and research. The most advanced teaching must
always lean on and look back to the elementary things ; and
these must always stand out clearly from the rest, and be
emphasized so far as may be needed to prevent our scholars
from losing themselves in a maze of detail.

The teacher must therefore keep all these three aims always
more or less in view. The characteristic difference between
elementary and advanced teaching is not in the amount of
detail, but in the relative prominence of these different aims.
Advanced teaching need not always be detailed teaching. It may
very well be a mere summary of the teacher's own results,
which the students are to test by working out the details for
themselves under his general guidance. Just as the teacher
who has not learning enough spoils his outline by his imperfect
grasp of the details underlying it, so the teacher who has more
learning than he can manage thinks it enough to pile up details
without bringing out clearly the important points. The one

The Teaching of Ecclesiastical History. 3

mistake is about as bad as the other ; and it is quite possible
to commit both at once.

The two chief methods of teaching are by lectures and by
papers. Each has its own advantages. Lectures are (or ought
to be) fresher and more interesting, and the best means of
opening out new ideas ; while papers are better suited to follow
them up (not at once, but after an interval) and to test and
strengthen the student's grasp of his work. Thus (as we shall
see more fully later on) the two methods call for somewhat
different faculties in the teacher, so that while both methods
ought to be used, the individual teacher may fairly lean a little
to that for which he feels best qualified. Within certain limits,
the work he can do best is the best work he can do for his
pupils.

The first thing to be done in lecturing is to get a clear plan
for the lecture. This plan may vary greatly from lecture to
lecture ; but it should always be carefully chosen. It must be
simple, and it ought to give a natural arrangement of the
matter in hand. Thus the political history of Western Europe
for some time after the treaty of Utrecht may be gathered
round the efforts of Spain to recover her lost possessions in
Italy ; and the physical geography of Spain herself will map
out well her eight hundred years of conflict with the Moors.
But whatever the plan may be, it must be strictly carried out.
Digressions are useful enough, and may even form the chief
part of the lecture. But any serious digression ought to be
planned out beforehand, and all digression must be kept firmly
subject to the peremptory condition that there never be a
moment's doubt where the thread of the plan is left, and where
it is taken up again.

The arrangement of the lecture needs care. The heads
should stand out boldly, and there should not be too many of
them. If more than five seem wanted, let some of them be
grouped together. Even the subdivisions must be clear, and
clearly distinguished from the larger headings. If only the

4 The Teaching of Ecclesiastical History.

arrangement is quite clear, it is none the worse for being a
little formal. The wording, on the other hand, should be
elastic. Critical sentences will need careful study ; but in
general, the more freely we speak the better. Half the battle
is to watch the class and keep in touch with it, and catch the
inspirations of the moment without digressing at random.

The delivery should be slow, so that students may be able
to take down most of what is said ; and an occasional pause
(not merely after a critical sentence) will be a help. If the voice
is quickened, it should be an understood sign that students are
for the moment to take nothing down. Bad lectures are more
commonly made bad by quick speaking, want of pauses, and
consequent overpress of details than by faulty arrangement.
The young and zealous teacher goes too quickly, doing work
for his class which they ought to do for themselves, and
crowding his lectures with details better learned from books.
The old lecturer who knows his ground and has forgotten his
own early difficulties also goes too quickly, throwing down
valuable hints for his best men, and leaving the rest to find
their way as they can. I have heard of lectures where every
word was gold-dust, which yet were largely thrown away, be-
cause nobody could take good notes of them. Near akin to
quick speaking is another disorderly habit. A lecturer ought
not commonly to need a wheelbarrow for his books : and it is
a bad sign if he goes home laden like a beast of burden.

How about notes for the lecturer's own use ? Some speak
without notes ; and this is an excellent plan, but only for those
who are perfectly sure of themselves. The risk is very great
of forgetting parts of the plan, of breaking down in trying to
frame critical sentences, or of being tempted into imprudent
digressions. Others write out everything, and simply read
their notes ; and this is commonly fatal. The more our eyes
are on the class and the less on notes the better. Lectures
must be spoken, not read : and the power to read a manuscript
as if it were freshly spoken is one of hard attainment. In its

The Teaching of Ecclesiastical History. 5

absence, nothing but rare excellence can keep a read lecture
from becoming a soporific. The best way is to take in notes
full enough to remind us of our plan and help us through any
sentences that have to be worded with special care, but not full
enough to tempt us into the fatal error of reading them. If
these notes are carefully drawn they may with advantage be
laid on the table for inspection as soon as the lecture is over.
The younger students in particular will learn method from them
in the most effective way.

This then seems to be the ideal of a lecture : — plan clear
and thoughtful, arrangement clear and rather formal, delivery
clear and slow, wording clear and free, but suggestive and
precise. Tell your class that every phrase and every turn
of a phrase is there for a purpose ; and invite them to take it
to pieces, and see with their own eyes and not with yours that
things are well and truly stated. I am satisfied that a lecture
which fairly aims at this ideal will be almost equally useful to
students who differ widely in attainment. The weakest abso-
lutely need the clear plan of the lecture to guide their reading,
and will get strong encouragement from every glimpse of its
deeper meaning ; while even the strongest are always glad of a
clean suggestive outline, full of hints for further study.

Some will think this ideal pitched too high, at least for
the Poll man. I have not found it so. Give him your best,
and take extra pains to make sure that everything is quite
clear ; but do not lecture down to him. He will often answer
splendidly, if he is properly appealed to. Your conversation
class at the end of the term will be a pelt of eager questions ;
and long before the year is out you will see waves pass
through the room like the wind over the corn — sometimes
even the lecturer's crowning triumph, when every pen drops
of itself in close and eager listening, as if a signal had been
given. The teacher can commit no more crying sin than in
thinking that inferior work is good enough for backward
students. Said a former College tutor to me once, " You

6 The Teaching of Ecclesiastical History.

know you cannot do much with the Poll man. I find it as
much as he can manage if I give him a few simple questions,
and expect an answer in the words of the book." He was not
famed for success in teaching the Poll man.

We pass now from lectures to papers. Both are commonly
needed. Lectures are likely to evaporate if they are not
followed up by papers ; and papers are likely to be frag-
mentary work if no foundation has been laid for them by
lectures. Fifteen or twenty years ago papers were very com-
monly looked on as menial work, but I hope that idea is
nearly dead now. In truth, the task of looking over a paper
thoroughly is very much harder than that of giving a good
lecture. It is not enough to score the answers overnight, and in
the morning deliver a general harangue on all things and
certain other things. Another plan is to look over the paper
with each man singly, thereby securing him the overestimated
"benefit of individual attention." But if this is not done
perfunctorily it consumes an enormous amount of time ; and
(what is worse) it throws away the important help which
students can be made to give each other. There is a better
way than this, but a much harder one.

In my later years of private teaching the excessive number of
lectures to which theological students were driven (often two,
three, or even four in a morning) compelled me to do most of my
work by papers. The plan finally hammered out was this. The
class was six or seven. A smaller number did not give enough
variety, and a much larger one was unwieldy. As variety was
an object no care was taken to sort the men. Strong and
weak sat in the same class, and with the best results. The
weak sometimes helped and seldom hindered the strong, while
the strong helped the weak enormously. There were three, four,
at utmost five questions in the paper, with perhaps three or four
more below a line. These last were quite optional, and seldom
answered ; but a few words at the end were enough to shew
the way of dealing with them. The questions, especially those

The Teaching of Ecclesiastical History. 7

above the line, were big subjects, more or less of an essay
character, which required a fair amount of reading and con-
siderable grasp of mind to do them really well. Easy questions
were avoided. If anyone could not do the whole paper he had
standing orders to bring two answers done in outline rather
than one completely : yet if anyone pleased he was welcome
every now and then to throw his entire strength on a single
question, doing it much more thoroughly than usual. Then I
took the first man's answer to the first question, and com-
mented on it there and then, not only for his own benefit, but
for the class ; and so on round the table, summing up myself
at the end, and perhaps giving my own answer. After this
the next question, beginning with another man. This is a plan
which draws heavily on the teacher. In lecturing he has only
to put the subject in the best way he can find : but here he
must take it up at a moment's notice by any handle that may
be offered him. He must see through the whole structure of
the answer at a glance, and recognize in a moment the whole
process by which it was put together. Then comes the criticism ;
and this will task to the uttermost his command of the subject.
Mere slips of grammar or fact he scores quietly : but these are
small matters. Sometimes he reads out an extract from an
answer, sometimes he outlines it for public benefit, sometimes
he tells two men to read each other's papers (rather a stretch
of authority), sometimes he invites the class to dissect some
tempting half truth, sometimes he calls attention to some
new view of the matter, and occasionally he puts in a quiet hit
at some bit of petty naughtiness at the far end of the table.
Misbehaviour of any consequence I met with less than half-a-
dozen times in more than twenty years.

The first advantage of this plan is that each man not only
does the question himself but gets the salient points of half-a-
dozen other men's answers picked out for him and discussed
before the teacher sums up himself. True, the weaker men
find the questions very hard, and often wholly miss the point

8 The Teaching of Ecclesiastical History.

of them. But they soon begin to see that if they have honestly
done what they can, they always know enough about the
matter to see its bearings when they are pointed out in class :
and meanwhile their occasional successes and even half suc-
cesses will give them courage. A man gains new confidence
when for the first time he has done a hard question better than
some to whom he has always looked up. But here the teacher
needs all his gentleness. Let him above all things beware of
impatiently brushing aside an imperfect answer as worthless.
He must give the man credit for every touch of insight, and
even for honest work that has turned out a failure, and then
take it just as it stands, and gently lay open the misconception
which has done the mischief. A very little roughness or want
of sympathy will utterly ruin this part of the work.

Another advantage is that men are drawn together, and
the class becomes more or less a society for friendly study. It
represents a German Seminar on a lower plane. Men not only
have abundant samples of method, but get used to hearing
subjects of their own reading discussed from all points of view.
The beginner cannot do much more than get up what he finds
in his book ; and from this point we must lead him on to look
all round things, to see their connexions, to use his own judg-
ment, and to recognize old problems under all disguises.
Whatever questions may come before him in the Tripos he
must know exactly the method of dealing with them. The
flexibility of mind required to do this is even more distinctive
of the educated man than his learning ; and I know no better
training for it than by such papers as are here described.

Lectures and papers must be the staple of our regular
teaching. Essays may have to be prepared for ; but students
who are well trained on papers will not need to devote any
very great attention to them. On the other hand, the con-
versation class is an occasional help of great importance. In
this the Socratic method is a powerful weapon in skilled and
gentle hands, especially for clearing up elementary ideas ; but

The Teaching of Ecclesiastical History. 9

I have never felt myself quite equal to it. I therefore did the
clearing chiefly in the papers, and devoted the conversation
class to humbler uses. The men were told to look up difficulties,
bring their note-books, and ask what they liked. They generally
managed a good bombardment of questions. There was no
great harm if the talking was chiefly done by a few of the best
men ; for if their questions were not quite representative, they
were all the more useful and suggestive. They generally got
quite as much from a conversation class as from a lecture. Nor
is the teacher who simply stands and answers questions quite
so passive as he seems. If he wants a particular question
asked, he can generally force it as a conjuror forces a card, by
properly shaping his answers. He can be active enough if he
pleases.

Guidance rather than teaching is needed by students of a
riper sort, who are ready or nearly ready for original research.
In Cambridge either the Theological or the Historical Tripos
will now give an excellent training in historical method. A
man who goes through either, and takes a good place in his
Second Part, has laid a broad foundation for future work, and
made a good start with the critical study and comparison of
original writers. When a man has once reached this point,
historical teaching proper falls into the background, though
he may still want special help from the philosopher, the
antiquarian, the palaeographer, the economist, or the teacher of
languages. The German Seminar is in itself excellent : but
it has never taken root in Cambridge. Only a few students
yearly are equal to the work, and most of these either go down
as soon as they have taken their degree, or if they stay in
residence they are most likely reading for some other Tripos
or competing for some University distinction, or possibly
already preparing a dissertation, so that hardly any have leisure
to join a Seminar. When a man is ready to undertake a
dissertation, the only help that can be given him is some
general information about books and original authorities, and

io The Teaching of Ecclesiastical History.

perhaps a few general cautions about wider aspects of the
subject which he may be in danger of overlooking.

As regards the teaching of Ecclesiastical as distinct from
that of General History, I really have nothing to say. I will
not even put in a caution against the odium theologicutn, for
this is no special disease of Theology, but the common pest of
all studies. Quarrelsome dogs can always get up a fight ; and
bone for bone of contention, bimetallism is as good as tran-
substantiation. I hear say that artists can disagree ; and I
have seen a very pretty quarrel over the Gulf Stream. The
only difference is that ecclesiastical language has a few
peculiarities.

THE TEACHING OF PALAEOGRAPHY
AND DIPLOMATIC.

The name Diplomatic is traced back to the illustrious
Jean Mabillon, who in his treatise De Re Diplomatica, first
published in 1681, laid the foundations of the science. The
tradition which he left among his brethren of the Congregation
of St Maur was loyally maintained by them ; and it is to two of
his successors, Dom Toustain and Dom Tassin, that we owe
the second great treatise on the subject, the Nouveau Traite de
Diplomatique, which appeared in six volumes between 1750
and 1765. Here we have Diplomatique as a substantive, and
hence the word found its way into Germany, Italy, and
England ; though the modern Germans prefer to use their own
word Urkundenlehre. Diplomatic, according to its etymology,
is the science of documents, but Mabillon used the word in a
broader sense, to include everything connected with the rules
of writing as well. It was only by degrees that these rules
were differentiated to form a separate science of Palaeography.
The distinction may be put in this way : Diplomatic has
nothing to do with writing in itself; Palaeography has to do
exclusively with writing. Or again, Palaeography deals with
the external elements of a written text; Diplomatic, with its
internal organism. The palaeographer studies the forms of
written characters, the history of the alphabet, and of the
styles of writing used in different countries and in different

12 The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic.

ages. He examines the materials on which writing is found,
analyses the ink in which it is written, describes the miniatures
with which a book is decorated. But it is not his part to
interpret what is written : his function is to explain the outer
form. Palaeography thus is concerned with a far wider field
than Diplomatic ; it takes in all written books and documents
in all languages and of all ages : but it does not go behind the
writing. Diplomatic on the other hand is limited to docu-
ments, and practically to the forms and styles of documents
which grew up under the later Roman Empire and among
the barbarian invaders, in a system which has continued,
though with manifold changes, down to our own day. The
two studies thus distinguished have a certain margin of
common territory; and if a palaeographer in many depart-
ments of his work can afford to dispense with Diplomatic,
the diplomatist cannot proceed far without a knowledge of
Palaeography. Both studies are limited, in different ways, to
the form of a written text, and are thus excluded from the
province of the historian, since he is occupied with its matter.
Yet the historian has need of Diplomatic, as the primarily
critical science, to enable him to discern between the genuine
and the spurious, and the diplomatist on his side must consult
the historian in order to obtain working data for many of the
principles he has to establish.

With Palaeography we are only here concerned in so far as
it is connected with Diplomatic and History. Practically we
are limited to Medieval Latin Palaeography, for the broken-
down types of handwriting which followed the invention of
printing are too irregular to be brought under any scientific
definition, and the technical court-hand of our lawyers is a
professional development — or rather an artificial perversion —
of a known style, by the help of which it can be mastered with
a little practice. Classical Palaeography, on which courses of
lectures are frequently given by the Professors of Greek and
Latin at Oxford, and for which there is a special Readership at

The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic. 13

Cambridge, lies in itself outside our range. But the lessons of
Classical Palaeography, with which we may include that of
Biblical manuscripts, are themselves of abundant value for the
historical student, since they furnish him with the best equip-
ment for the textual criticism of his authorities. For the copyist
of historical works was liable to the same errors as one who
transcribed other books, and the sources and modes of textual
corruption have been the subjects of the most complete exam-
ination in connexion with Biblical and Classical writings.

At Oxford there has been established for many years past
a Lectureship in Medieval Palaeography which its learned
holder, Mr Falconer Madan, has sought to make serviceable
' for persons studying for the Classical or Modern History
Schools.' We may take his method as a model for such
teaching. Unfortunately the arrangement made by the Uni-
versity provides only for one course of lectures in each year.
While therefore Mr Madan drew out his lectures on a scheme
extending over three years, he had to take into consideration
the certainty that some members of his class each year would
be beginners. Accordingly he devised the ingenious expedient
of sometimes breaking up his course of lectures delivered twice
a week into two separate courses ; so that, for instance, the
Tuesday lectures might form the continuation of the previous
year's course, while the Thursday lectures, or a part of them,
might form an elementary course for beginners. A full
syllabus was printed so that students might know what was
new and what old. Mr Madan by degrees greatly increased
the usefulness of his teaching by the provision of thirty-six
facsimiles of manuscripts, which are circulated among the class
or can be purchased if desired. And thus as the collection of
facsimiles was made more complete and representative, it
became possible to economise time in the explanation of
details, and to combine a permanent introductory course with
a varying element of more advanced instruction. It will be
well to illustrate the system both of the double and single

14 The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic.

lectures by giving the main points in Mr Madan's syllabus for
two different years, 1891 and 1897. In the latter the refer-
ences to the facsimiles, which occupy a prominent place in
the original, have been omitted.

1. The scope and use of Palaeography.
2. The history of the Alphabet.

3. The Genealogy of Western Handwritings.
4. Abbreviations and Contractions.

5. Handwritings of the British Isles to a.d. 900.
6. Forms of Letters A — E.

7. The Caroline Minuscule in the ninth and tenth
centuries.
8. Letters F— M.

9. The eleventh century, especially in England.
10. Letters N — R.

11. Book Production in the Middle Ages.
12. Letters S — Z, Numerals, &c.

13. The application of Palaeography to Textual Criti-
cism.
14. Informal (how to collate and describe MSS.).

1
2

3

4

5

6

7
8

9

10

II.

The Alphabet.

Writing in Western Europe to a.d. 800.

Early writing in the British Isles.

Contractions.

The Continental hand in the 10th and nth centuries.

The extinction of English national writing.

The 1 2th century.

The change to a Gothic hand.

Court-hand of the 13th century.

The 14th century.

The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic. 1 5

11. The 15 th century.

12. The 15th century, continued.

13. A 15th century Court Roll.

14. How to describe and collate a MS.

The student of Palaeography has the advantage of an
admirable textbook in English in Sir Edward Maunde Thomp-
son's Greek and Latin Palaeography (2nd edition, 1894). In
French we may mention two treatises, the Manuel de Paleo-
graphie by M. Prou (1890), and Elements de Paleographie by
Canon Reusens (1899). It is to be regretted that no treatise
exists on the special Palaeography of English manuscripts.
Sir Edward Thompson's book is furnished with a good selec-
tion of facsimiles. Most of these however are necessarily
reduced in size, and it is desirable to have constant recourse
to the large specimens which have been reproduced by the
autotype process in five great volumes by the Palaeographical
Society. Similar collections, though none on so comprehensive
a scale, have been published in France, Germany, and Italy ;
but the volumes of the Palaeographical Society are the most
accessible in England. Two small collections may also be
mentioned, which, though published primarily with a literary
object, will be found useful by persons working at the develop-
ment of medieval handwriting for the purposes of historical
study. These are Professor R. Ellis's Facsimiles from Latin
MSS. in the Bodleian Library and Professor Skeat's Twelve
Facsimiles of Old English Manuscripts. The study of the
subject must necessarily be carried on with the help of fac-
similes at every stage ; and these can now be produced so
cheaply that every teacher can if he pleases form a small col-
lection of his own in a sufficient number of copies to serve for
study in a class. If he has these transferred to lantern slides
he will gain a great advantage in pointing out minute details
on the screen ; but lectures delivered in a darkened room have
drawbacks to those who wish to take notes.

1 6 The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic.

It is of the first importance to learn not only how to read
a manuscript but also how to assign its date. The two acquire-
ments indeed are closely related ; for the reason why one reads
a particular letter in a particular way is that it belongs to a
particular time. The same sign means w in the Anglo Saxon
of the tenth century, and y in the English of the thirteenth ;
the r of one age is hardly to be distinguished from the n of
another; and so forth. But the beginner must never be
misled into believing — what is sometimes maintained by
persons who ought to know better — that a single letter will
serve to date a manuscript, or that there is any absolute point
of time before or after which a given form is impossible. He
must learn to judge the age of a manuscript by the general
type and character which it presents, and then test his conclu-
sion by examining the letters in detail. But he must never
forget that handwriting like architecture changed imperceptibly,
under various influences and at various places. Allowance
must also be made for the age of the individual scribe, which
is seldom known ; since an elderly man will usually preserve
the style of writing in which he was brought up. With practice
the student will be able to mark the peculiarities of different
countries. He will even discern the features of a particular
scriptorium, as that of St Martin's at Tours in Carolingian
times, of St Paul's Cathedral in the twelfth century, or of
St Alban's Abbey in the thirteenth. When we come to
manuscripts in modern languages, a knowledge of the history
of phonetic changes and of dialects helps us to assign date and
place; and the Humanist movement remodels the spelling of
Latin. But considerations such as these last are secondary.
They must not be applied by themselves to fix the date of a
manuscript, but only to corroborate a result arrived at on
properly palaeographical grounds.

Recent discoveries of papyri have added very largely to the
materials for study, specially for that of the ancient Greek and
Roman cursive hands. But if we are learning Palaeography

The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic. 1 7

with the view of working at the sources of medieval history, we
can leave this very intricate department of the subject almost
altogether on one side. It will indeed help us to understand the
origines of the National hands, as they are called, — distinguished
by the misleading names, Visigothic, Merovingian, and Lom-
bardic; — but hardly to interpret them. Indeed the modern
historian only comes directly into contact with the Roman
cursive if he has occasion to study the documents of the Exar-
chate, and their interest is to a larger extent diplomatic than
palaeographical. For general purposes of study it is sufficient
to begin with the Uncial type, the Irish and English hands,
the National hands, the Half-Uncial, and the Caroline
Minuscule, the formed Book-hand of the later middle ages, and
the Court-hand of charters. If our object is antiquarian, to deal
with English local or family records, it is not a bad plan to
begin with the beautifully clear writing which we find in the
charters of the reign of King John, and to work downwards
until in the fifteenth century on the one hand it breaks down
altogether, and on the other crystallises into the highly technical
forms of the modern Court and Chancery hands.

For the learning of abbreviations a dictionary of some
sort is essential. The great Lexicon Diplomaticum of Walther
(1756) is still the most extensive work of reference. Smaller
works are those of A. Chassant (5th edition, 1884), C. Trice
Martin ( The Record Interpreter, 1892, an enlargement of the
appendix to his edition of Wright's Court Hand Restored), and
A. Cappelli {Dizionario dei Abbreviature, 1899). There is
also a dictionary of abbreviations given by Sir Thomas Duffus
Hardy in the Registrum Sacrum Palatinum, vol. iii., which is
serviceable for English manuscripts.

It has seemed sufficient to give a bare suggestion of hints
and cautions, because the student of Palaeography is supplied
with the necessary textbooks. In Diplomatic it is otherwise.
The Englishman who wishes to learn the subject is totally
without any methodical guide. He may read its general prin-

1 8 The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic.

ciples in the excellent Manuel de Diplomatique of the late
M. Giry (1894) or the still more copious but as yet unfinished
Handbuch der Urkundenlehre in Deutschland und Italien of
Professor Bresslau (vol. i., 1889). But only in the former of
these, and there very summarily, will he find anything about the
special documentary forms used in England. Among English
writers George Hickes, the Nonjuring Dean of Worcester, in his
Linguarum Septentrionalium Thesaurus (1703 — 1705), was the
first to deal at all specially with* Anglo-Saxon documents; and
Thomas Madox in the preface to his Formulare Anglicanum
(1702) set out very clearly the relation between the terms of
charters and their legal import. But in the two centuries that
have passed since Hickes and Madox little indeed has been pub-
lished on the subject. Andrew Wright's Court- Hand Restored,
first published in 1773 (9th Edition by Mr C. T. Martin, 1879),
was written with a purely practical purpose, as The Studenfs
Assistant in reading Old Deeds, Charters, Records, etc. ; but it
may be applied to the study of the development of the forms
of documents as well. We have some remarks, of real value,
though in part uncritical and erroneous, in the preface to
Kemble's Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici (1839- 1848),
and others by Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy in the prefaces to
the Charter, Patent, and Close Rolls of King John (1 833-1837).
Professor Earle in his Handbook to the Land Charters and
other Saxonic Documents (1888), has improved upon Kemble,
and Professor Maitland, partly with the help of Brunner, has
in a few paragraphs of his Domesday Book and Beyond (1897)
shed more light on the origin and meaning of the Anglo-Saxon
diploma than anyone before him. Lastly Professor Napier
and Mr W. H. Stevenson have furnished contributions of
extreme value to the criticism of a small number of documents
contained in the Crawford Collection (1895). Nor should
reference be omitted to Mr J. H. Round's many important
detached essays and notes on Norman and Angevin documents,
though these are not strictly diplomatic, since to Mr Round

The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic. 19

the form is only of interest in so far as it illustrates the
matter.

The teacher of Diplomatic has therefore, so far as England
is concerned, to construct his science largely by himself with
the help of the original charters still preserved. Happily these,
for the Anglo-Saxon period, immensely surpass in number
those of any other country for the same time, and most of
them have been reproduced in facsimile by the Ordnance
Survey and the Trustees of the British Museum. After the
Norman Conquest originals exist in great plenty, and the
official enrolments of the Exchequer and the Chancery begin
respectively under King Henry I. and King John. It is hardly
necessary to add that the documents preserved in transcripts of
a somewhat or a much later date, are far more numerous than
the originals. But the fact that so large a number of originals
remains to us is an enormous advantage to the student; for
Diplomatic, as we have said, is primarily a critical science, and
to establish the rules of criticism with certainty we require
originals as a basis. No one can be confident that a transcript
has not been tampered with, consciously or unconsciously, in
the very points which we need in order to ascertain whether it
is genuine or spurious. To take a simple example, suppose
that we find a document preserved in a transcript which
begins Henricus rex A?iglie and claims to emanate from the
chancery of King Henry I. We know that this king was
rex Anglorum ; the scribe is merely introducing thoughtlessly
the later style of the Plantagenets, having probably the abbre-
viated Angt in the original before him. No argument for or
against its genuineness can be drawn from the fault in the title.
But had the Anglie occurred in a professing original, it could
be set down at once as a forgery.

It is essential at the outset to define the limits of the
science of Diplomatic. It deals, we have said, with docu-
ments, but only with documents in a narrow and technical
sense. The word document is often, and rightly, used to

2 — 2

20 The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic.

denote anything which the historian may take as evidence.
It may include an inscription, a coin, or a chronicle. But
none of these is a document in the diplomatic acceptation,
which includes only such documents as might be brought as
evidence in a court of law; that is to say, charters, rolls,
accounts, and the like. It is important to bear in mind the
technical limitation of the term Diplomatic, for in consequence
of the earlier usage of the word, as including Palaeography, it
is common to find the expression 'diplomatic evidence' as
a synonym for 'the evidence of manuscripts,' and a 'diplomatic
text' for one which strictly reproduces the features of a manu-
script. No book, as such, is a document; but many books, —
registers, chartularies, and historical works, — contain docu-
ments; and when originals fail us, we have to take recourse to
such transcripts in later collections. But it is only when we
have originals before us that we can be absolutely safe. The
details of style, of formulae, of modes of ratification, are apt to
be corrupted in transcription ; and the forms of one age are
silently, even unconsciously, exchanged for those of another.
Our primary concern is therefore with originals. We have to
trace their forms at different times, in different countries, in
different chanceries; and from these to establish the criteria of
genuineness. Forgery plays a large part in the production of
medieval documents, and it is the business of the diplomatist
to lay down rules for sifting out the false from the true.

The study of originals will also save us from a pitfall in which
until recent years scholars often stumbled. They assumed the
rules of a given chancery to be invariably, inflexibly observed,
and when they found any deviations from them they put down
the document without further question as spurious or at least
as corrupt. This method has been largely superseded through
the work of two leading Austrian critics, Professor Julius Ficker
and Freiherr von Sick el. The latter elaborated the principle
of the comparison of handwriting ; and when it is once proved
that a number of documents are written in the autograph of

The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic. 21

the same chancery official, their genuineness is established, no
matter what small errors, e.g. in dating, they may present.
The former explored the development of the single document
in its various stages, from the petition on which it was founded,
the draught which embodied the substance of the petition, and
the fair copy, to the final attestation and execution of this last,
which turned it into what we call the original. When we pass
from the original to the transcript the investigation becomes
more complicated. The labours of these scholars have de-
molished many cut-and-dried theories ; but they have at the
same time led to a good deal of hypercriticism in the hands of
less competent students. If it is argued that a forgery is based
upon a genuine original of somewhat different purport and
worked up with the help of another document of the same
time and chancery, it is clear that we have an opening for
hypothetical theories which unless controlled with judgment
will end in purely conjectural results. With reference to
Sickel's method, it may be added that the comparison of hand-
writing leads naturally to the comparison of style, and that the
study of the technical language (dictamen) of certain types of
documents has been employed with success for the purposes
of criticism.

A debateable territory between the diplomatist and the
historian lies in the region of private letters, despatches, and
reports. They belong mainly to the historian, and it is only
the formal elements which concern the diplomatist. This is
the test all through : the historical matter may be of use in
helping the establishment of diplomatic principles, but it is not
itself diplomatic.

Within the strict and limited class of documents there is
a distinction to be insisted upon, which involves a legal as well
as a diplomatic interest. One class of documents produces
a new state of things ; for instance, a certain deed by itself
changes the property of a piece of land from A's hand to B's;
it is the vehicle of the grant. Another class merely records or

22 The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic.

notifies a state of things already existing: as when a king
makes known to all men in his realm that he has granted
a certain piece of land to C. Both classes serve as legal proof
of the act done; but in the former case the act is not complete
until the document is drawn up, in the latter the document has
no influence on the disposition, it merely declares the fact that
it has been made. The effective document is the diploma (or
charta in the narrow sense); the notifying document is the
notitia (or tvrit). Either of them may be in the form of a letter.

The elements of which a document is composed are neces-
sarily varied according to the purport of the document ; they
are customarily varied according to the usages of different
countries and times; and they are classified variously by almost
every writer upon the subject. It does not really matter much
how we construct our classification, so long as we understand
what we mean by the terms we use, and so long as we
remember that not all the component parts are uniformly
found, nor always arranged in the same order. It is the
business of the teacher of Diplomatic to draw out the differ-
ences in detail. Here we can only give a general statement of
the normal elements in a document.

A document is a series of formulae built upon a definite
system. It consists of two parts. One is the text, or body,
which contains the substance or legal purport of the document.
This is usually placed in the middle, between the two parts of
the protocol, or more strictly between the protocol and the
eschatocol. These parts are subdivided as follows :

i. Protocol.

i. The Invocation or Chrism (from the XP[I2T02]

monogram which often takes its place).
2. The Title {Superscripts), giving the name and style

of the grantor. This is often accompanied by the

grace or formula of devotion {Dei gratia or the

like).

The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic. 23

3. The Address (fnscriptio), giving the name or names

of the person or persons to whom the document is
directed.

4. The Greeting (Salutatio).

ii. Text.

1. The Proem (Arenga), stating in general terms the

motive for the act effected or declared in the docu-
ment. This is commonly limited to the expression
of religious sentiments, and is herein distinguished
from what we call a Preamble, which has more in
common with the Narratio.

2. The Notification (Promulgatio).

3. The Statement of the case (Narratio).

4. The Enacting or Operative Clause (Dispositio).

5. The Penal Clause or Clauses (Sanctio).

6. The Notice of Authentication (Corroboratio).

iii. Final Protocol or Eschatocol.

1. The Names (Subscriptiones) or Marks (Signationes)

of witnesses, of the grantor, and of the chancery
official or scribe.

2. The Date of Place.

3. The Date of Time.

4. The Amen or similar religious ending (including the

Appreciation a prayer for the effectuating of the
deed).

This enumeration is not complete ; but it indicates gene-
rally the features which may be expected to appear in a solemn
form of diploma. It is important to notice whether the docu-
ment has any special marks of authentication and what form of
seal, if any, it bears. The study of Seals has indeed been
specialised as a distinct study — Sphragistic ; — but it comes
most conveniently under the head of Diplomatic.

The mention of the date leads us to observe that though

24 The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic.

Chronology is of course a science by itself, yet its study is so
essential to that of Diplomatic that (in spite of the arguments
of certain purists) no course of instruction in this subject is
complete which does not include a full treatment of technical
Chronology. In History one may go very far without any more
extensive knowledge of Chronology than that which concerns
the date of the beginning of the year, the difference between
Old and New Style, the dates of Easter and of some of the
chief Holy Days. In Diplomatic, on the other hand, one can
hardly proceed a step without requiring an exact knowledge of
the chronological systems which prevailed in the middle ages ;
and for this reason, that a large proportion of our documents
are dated in an imperfect manner. Some documents indeed
bear such scanty notes of date that no knowledge of Chronology
by itself will help us. We have to call in the assistance of
Palaeography and of History; and we have known the case
of a letter in which these aids have fixed the single indication
'Tuesday' to the definite day, 16 Dec. 1292. More com-
monly we have to combine the historical data (e.g., the Regnal
Years of kings) with those of Chronology ; and the more thorough
our knowledge Of Chronology, the more likely we are to arrive at
a certain conclusion in regard to imperfectly dated documents.

The points to be specially borne in mind are (1) the days
of the week, (2) the days of the month, (3) Holy Days, (4) the
reckoning of years, with particular notice of the various ways of
beginning the year.

(1) With respect to the days of the week it is only necessary
here to say that when specified in a document in connexion
with some other date they often furnish an immediate guide to
the required year. For example, if we have a document of the
reign of King Henry IV. dated on Friday, the morrow of
SS. Peter and Paul, we can fix it immediately to 1402. For
Friday, 30 June, requires a Sunday Letter A, and this only
occurred during the supposed reign in 1402. As the calendar
year begins and ends on the same week-day, every successive

The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic. 25

year begins naturally one day later than that preceding it, so
that, were it not for leap year, we should find the same week-
days recurring on the same days of the month every seven
years. The intercalated day in Leap Year1 disturbs this regu-
larity, so that it is impossible without calculation or a reference
to tables to say how often in a given period of time the same
week-days will fall on the same days of the month. If one
uses tables it should be remembered (as is indeed obvious)
that as the week-day goes forwards the Sunday Letter goes
backwards. But it is very desirable to commit to memory
some ready means of finding in a moment the day of the week
for any given year. The simplest, though not the most
scientific, method is that of Father Chambeau, S.J., in which
one adds together five numbers and divides by seven ; the
remainder giving the day of the week, Sunday being 1, Monday
2, and so forth. The five numbers are these :

1. The year in the century.

2. One quarter of this, omitting fractions (to allow for
the leap years).

3. The month number.

Jan. Feb. Mar. April. May. June. July. Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec.
I44025036146

These correspond to the Lunar Regulars, and are not hard to
remember. In leap year, January and February 1 — 24 have
to be diminished by 1.

4. The day of the month.

5. The style number. In the Julian calendar (Old Style)
this is 18 minus the number of the century. In the Gregorian
calendar (New Style) it is

22 down to 1699

21 from 1700 to 1799

20 ,, 1800 „ 1899.

1 Note that this day is not 29 February but the day before the 6th of
the kalends of March, i.e. 24 February. Hence St Matthias' Day in leap
year was kept on 25 February.

26 The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic.

To illustrate this by an example, King John was crowned
on 27 May, 11 99. We set down

99

24 (the quarter)

2 (the month number)
27 (the day of the month)
18— 11 = 7 (the style number)

7)iS9

22 — remainder 5 = Thursday, and we know
it was Ascension Day.

The process may be simplified by casting out sevens at
each stage, thus :

1

3
2
6
o

7)12

1 — remainder 5 = Thursday.

(2) The days of the month were reckoned either after the
old Roman method by kalends, nones, and ides, or else in the
modern way from the first onwards. But there are peculiar
systems, that of Bologna and the Cisiojanus, which require to
be mastered separately.

(3) Holy Days were very commonly employed, especially
in the later middle ages, for the dating of documents. Lists of
Saints with their days will be found in M. Giry's Manuel de
Diplomatique and in all the books on Chronology. It is
important to bear in mind that the day on which a saint was
venerated was often not the same in all countries ; and that
when a saint had more than one day (e.g. a Translation as well
as a Deposition) it depended upon local usage which day was
denoted by the simple name. Movable feasts are among the

The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic. 27

most troublesome and at the same time the most serviceable
indications for determining dates. Their relations can be
calculated from Easter tables ; and there is a series of 35 com-
plete calendars for all possible years given by De Morgan and
Grotefend.

(4) Years have been reckoned in many ways. The Romans
dated by the consuls of the year, and when the consulate
coalesced with the Empire by the post consulatum of the
Emperor, which was nearly the same as a computation by
Regnal years. In the fourth century the Indiction, a cycle of
15 years, beginning as it seems in 297, came into use. This
only tells us the place of a year within a given cycle of 15 ; it
does not tell us which cycle in the series is meant. The Spanish
Era was a reckoning of years continuously from 38 B.C., which
remained in use in the Peninsula until the fourteenth century.

Lastly there was the Year of our Lord, which was fixed by
Dionysius Exiguus in the sixth century, but was not employed
as a means of dating documents until the Venerable Bede in his
treatise De Temporum Ratione (725) gave it the weight of his
authority. It was not however used in the Imperial chancery
until the ninth century, nor in the Papal until the tenth.
While it gradually superseded all other modes of computation,
there was nothing like agreement as to the day on which the
year began. The year of the Incarnation might be considered
to begin with the Annunciation (25 March) or with the Nativity
(25 Dec); in the one case the beginning of the year was
antedated, as compared with modern usage, by more than nine
months, in the other by a week. The inconvenience of the
former method must have been early felt, and it became usual
to reckon the Annunciation from the 25th March following.
Thus year 1000 would begin according to the style of Pisa on
25 March, 999, according to the Imperial and Anglo-Saxon
reckoning on 25 Dec. 999, and according to the style of
Florence on 25 March, 1000. The Venetians again began it
on 1 March, and the French style on Easter Day. All these

28 The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic.

diverse manners of counting years require to be carefully learnt
not merely for different periods and countries, but even for
different parts of the same country. It might be shewn for
instance that the dating the year from Christmas continued at
St Alban's long after it had been superseded in the greater
part of England by the Florentine style. But enough has been
said to illustrate the necessity of the study of Chronology for
the purpose of fixing the dates of documents and criticising
their genuineness.

The following list of books on Chronology is limited to
those which are of moderate compass and which will be found
specially serviceable to English students of Diplomatic.

Sir Harris Nicolas' Chronology of History (1833; new ed.

1840).
A. de Morgan's Book of Almanacs (1851).
J. J. Bond's Handy Book of Rules and Tables for verifying

Dates (1875 5 4tn e^- x889), ill arranged but useful.
H. Grotefend's Zeitrechnung des Deutschen Mittelalters und
der Neuzeit (1891-1898), and Taschenbuch der Zeitrech-
nung u. s. w. (1898); both beautifully printed, and the
former very comprehensive.
F. Riihl's Chronologie des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit (1897),
a very instructive little treatise.
But reference cannot be omitted to the classical Art de
verifier les Dates (1750; 4th ed. in 44 volumes, 1818-1844),
which forms the basis of most modern works — notably of L. de
Mas Latrie's Tresor de Chronologie (1889) — and to the not less
classical treatise of L. Ideler, Handbuch der mathematischen
und technischen Chronologie (1825-1826). The section on
chronology in M. Giry's Manuel de Diplomatique is also
scholarly and extremely clear.

If Chronology has been discussed at a length greatly out of
proportion to the place which it properly occupies in the study
of Diplomatic, the writer's excuse must be that it is a subject
which lends itself to a general treatment, whereas it would be

The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic. 29

quite impossible to give even an outline of the subject-matter of
Diplomatic within the limits to which this chapter is confined.

The order in which the history of the different chanceries
should be studied is one concerning which a great variety of
opinion is permissible. It should be remembered that Diplo-
matic far more than Palaeography has a national connexion.
The student of manuscripts can study the types of many coun-
tries without leaving England ; the student of documents on
the other hand will be thrown mainly upon native materials.
Hence the order in which the subject is taught should with us
be made to lead up to England. A convenient arrangement
is to begin with Papal documents, which have the advantage
of simplicity in their structure and at the same time of develop-
ing the greatest possible regularity of form and diction. Next
we may take Frankish documents, ascending to those of the
Empire, and handing on a double succession in France and in
Germany. Thirdly, the Anglo-Saxon diploma, which came
straight from middle Italy, may properly be treated, and the
varieties in its form discussed, until in the tenth century it
encountered a rival — the writ — by which it was finally dispos-
sessed. The eleventh century brought in continental influences
again, so that both at the beginning and in the middle it is
impossible to study English Diplomatic as a subject by itself.
To enter further into the development of the different chan-
ceries would take us beyond the limits of the present chapter.

We conclude by stating briefly what provision is made for
the teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic. At Oxford
both subjects have been entrusted to University Lecturers.
At Cambridge, besides the Readership in Palaeography already
mentioned, occasional recognition is given to both studies
by means of the Sandars Lectureship. In London, at the
London School of Economics and Political Science, regular
courses are given chiefly with a practical view to preparing
students for work at the Public Record Office and the
British Museum. Every German University offers lectures

30 The Teaching of Palaeography and Diplomatic.

more or less regularly, the larger ones regularly, with more
than one Professor or Privatdocent, both on Palaeography
and Diplomatic ; but nowhere is the entire subject so com-
pletely organised as at Paris. At the Ecole des Chartes
the course is one of three years. In the first year (we take the
syllabus of 1896-7) there are lectures (1) on Palaeography,
(2) on Romance Philology, each twice a week, (3) on Biblio-
graphy, once a week : in the second, (1) on Diplomatic, (2) on
the History of French Institutions, each twice a week, (3) on
the Authorities for French History, (4) on the Management of
Archives, each once a week: in the third, (1) on the History of
Civil and Canon Law, twice a week, (2) on Medieval Archaeo-
logy, (3) on the Authorities for French History, each once a
week. By the help of this institution France has trained a body
of expert palaeographers, diplomatic scholars, and archivists,
unsurpassed in any other country. Yet the German and
Austrian schools, even though occasionally discredited by the
ill-informed excesses of their disciples, still hold the first place
for the systematic character of their work and for the technical
perfection of their method.

THE TEACHING OF ANCIENT
HISTORY.

When we use the term 'History' we commonly use it in
one of two meanings (i) special or concrete, as the history of
the earth, of plants, of vertebrates, of the law of real property,
of the English people. Here the subject-matter is in each case
limited, as it must be in any work save a history of the uni-
verse. In practice we limit the word to subjects directly
connected with the political experience of the human race.
This is an arbitrary limitation : but far more arbitrary is the
division into periods, as Ancient, Mediaeval, and Modern. The
other meaning is when it is employed (2) to express 'historical
study.' Here we are concerned not with matter but with
method. The notion is quite a general one and the term is
abstract.

In the former sense a particular history may be learnt,
that is, its matter may be more or less completely assimilated
and retained. In the latter, the methods may be more or less
thoroughly acquired as a science and practised as an art. In
the former it is mainly the quantity, in the latter it is the
quality, that makes the difference between one student and
another.

Historical study is applied Logic. Reasoning is applied
(1) to the appraising of evidence, that is, to the extraction of
fact, (2) to the appraising of facts, that is, to the extraction of
their meaning.

32 The Teaching of Ancient History.

Now the further events are removed from us the harder it
is as a rule to ascertain the truth about them. The nearer
they are to us the harder it is as a rule to gauge their signifi-
cance.

It is not necessary to prove what has been called the 'unity
of history.' The continuity of the history of mankind is not
now questioned, and it is more and more established by the
extension of research. We cannot ignore progress, however at
times concealed or checked. But, since human powers are
limited, it is usual to fix the historical eye upon a group of
peoples in whose history progress is clearly seen. The history
with which we habitually deal is 'European' history, the history
of a group of progressive peoples who live or lived in or who
came recently from Europe. Its roots reach as far as India
and its branches are spreading over every sea.

If this be the history with which we are dealing, and if we
are for convenience sake to divide it into three great periods,
it is only natural to ask what is the meaning of this division,
so far as concerns Ancient history. Can it be to any extent
justified on grounds other than mere convenience? Can the
dividing line or border land be made to coincide with an
apparent break of events, a halt and a new departure ?

Now History shews us a period in the course of which small
city-states, great inorganic kingdoms, rude independent tribes.,
and one national kingdom (Macedon), share one after another
a common destiny. They become parts of an immense orga-
nization, the Roman Empire. This is not a true organism,
and its dissolution is gradual, a piecemeal process, the converse
of its formation. Its Western provinces are formed into king-
doms, the beginnings of the national states of modern times.
Here we are in presence of a great contrast. The period in
which the separative tendency in the empire overcomes the
aggregative is a sort of natural borderland.

Religion presents a not less striking contrast. The old
religions are distinctly local, and they are the affairs of groups

The Teaching of Ancient History. 33

— family, clan, state, etc. They are a means of profit, of
securing the help of the gods. The gods, great and small,
are numberless. Modern religions are (at least potentially)
ecumenical, and the affair of the individual. They are (at least
in aim) a means of morality, of promoting or checking certain
kinds of conduct. They are monotheistic. In European
history a natural border-period may be found in the struggles
and triumph of the Christian Church.

Nor is it otherwise with Law. It too is an affair of groups
and is closely connected with religion. Speaking generally,
the ancient state of things is that those who share the same
religion (and no others) share the same law. Nowadays this
is out of date, at least in Christendom. Law regards indivi-
duals, and is not mixed up with religion. Now the period in
which it becomes clear that the individual, not the family, is
going to be the legal unit, is fairly to be treated as a border-
land.

The period that meets these requirements is broadly that
from Hadrian to Justinian, more narrowly from Constantine to
Justinian, beginning in fact with the failure of the machinery
of Diocletian. Into this period students of history, mediaeval
and ancient alike, must wander.

Here we must ask, if we limit Ancient History in some
such way as this, how is the teaching to be conducted ? Has
the study of the Ancient period any special objects and
methods of its own, primarily connected with it, if not peculiar
to it?

Now we know that the history of the Graeco-Roman world
is often treated as a part of Classical studies. I have even met
with the phrase 'Classical History.' The phrase truly indicates
that the 'history' is a mere appendage to the study of the
'Classical' writers. Literary considerations come first, and
certain portions of history are forced into prominence. Such
are the wretched Peloponnesian war down to 411 B.C. and the
Catilinarian conspiracy. Certain other portions are skimmed
a. 3

34 The Teaching of Ancient History.

or skipped, and after the death of Marcus Aurelius the business
simply comes to an end. The history of the kingdoms formed
out of Alexander's empire is all-important for understanding
the connexion of Greek and Roman. But from the Classical
point of view its interest suffers : it comes after Demosthenes
and before Cicero. In short, the study above sketched is not
strictly speaking historical study at all. Facts — 'Classical'
facts — are tested and verified. This is well done. But the
true meaning of the facts is less well grasped, for this 'history'
lacks perspective, and affords little help towards judging the
relative importance of events. Whence came the men who
supplied the enormous demand for all kinds of technical skill
created by the Roman Empire ? Mostly from the ranks of the
'Hellenistic' Greeks. Where was the chief centre of science
and technical skill in the 'Hellenistic' world? Alexandria.
Who gave the impulse to this great movement? Aristotle,
Alexander, and the early Ptolemies. But the sort of things that
the average Classical student will tell you about Alexandria are
the story of Caesar swimming with his notebook in one hand,
and the amours and tragic end of Cleopatra the sixth. We
must of course enter into the spirit of Virgil and Horace (not
to mention others) and this we take no small pains to do : but
for History as a connected whole, in which the effect of one or
more causes is ever becoming a cause of new effects and so
on, we are apt to lose both the leisure and the eye.

In short, History must start by looking backward. From
consideration of later ages we are enabled to form some notion
of the relative importance of events in earlier ages. Even
contemporary literature is but a blind guide. It does not as a
rule give us bare facts, but merely the writer's view of those
facts that seemed to him important. Not to discuss the ques-
tion of personal bias, the mere omissions are enough to destroy
perspective. Nothing is more helpful in illustrating the rela-
tions of Athens to her allies than facts concerning the tribute.
Yet Thucydides does not tell us of the great increase of the

The Teaching of Ancient History. 35

tribute in B.C. 425. The assertions of later orators were
naturally discredited by the silence of Thucydides. But in
recent years the fragments of an inscription1 have been found
to confirm their assertions. Again, there is a department,
Constitutional History, in which the omissions are the rule
and clear statement the exception, especially in the case of
Rome. Take for instance the popular assemblies. The subject
is a byword for obscurity. Nor can we be said to understand
the assemblies of the Greek states, save perhaps the Ekklesia of
Athens. Is there then no significant fact in relation to primary
assemblies that History can extract from the assemblies of
Greece and Rome ? Yes, surely this much at least, that voting
by heads and voting by groups are totally distinct methods of
procedure and give wholly different characters to assemblies in
which they are respectively used. The group-voting system
plays into the hands of the Roman nobles and helps to make
the conservative forces dominate in Roman politics. To it
is largely due the futility of democratic movements in the last
century of the Republic. A Demokraty in the Athenian sense
could not exist at Rome : the assembly could only serve to
set up a Monarch : and when the Monarch was found, the
Monarchy soon made terms with the Senate and ignored the
People. In so doing it became permanent. Now this group
system is an historical fact of great and manifest importance :
it not only influences the destinies of the Roman common-
wealth, but it is clearly the outcome of immemorial tendencies
and has its roots in the social and political conditions of
ancient Italy.

Thus," though Ancient History must and does suffer from
the lamentable incompleteness of the record, there is no lack
of significant facts on which a cautious teacher may insist.
But he must always be looking backward as well as forward,
in fact, going forward in order to look backward. In early

1 See note in Mr Hicks' Manual of Greek historical inscriptions, No. 47.

3—2

36 The Teaching of Ancient History.

times he is often largely dependent on the help of archaeology
and comparative philology and mythology. Studies of ancient
law and custom have been even more fruitful. The 'method
of survivals' has in judicious hands been a means of suggestion
and correction. On the other hand the bulk of documentary
evidence is, as compared with that of the later periods, un-
avoidably small. But in no department of his subject does he
find the path more beset with pitfalls than in the critical use of
literary testimony. A striking instance of this is the unflagging
controversy that still rages over the public careers of Demo-
sthenes and Cicero. To turn to that central figure in the
literature of ancient history, Polybius. His varied and practical
experience of public affairs, his Greek and Roman connexions,
his wide and philosophic views of history, all render him a
writer of first-rate importance. Yet his opinions are sometimes
grievously narrow and one-sided. He judges Demosthenes by
an unfair standard, and his views of former Greek politics are
coloured by Achaean jealousy of the Sparta of a later day.
At the same time he misreads the working of the Roman
constitution and needs himself the excuse of what I may call
contemporary blindness, the very justice that he refuses to
Demosthenes. We are perhaps in less danger of being misled
by the Roman writers. Their bias is as a rule too manifest.
Livy is preoccupied with the glory of Rome, Tacitus sees the
Empire through Senatorial glasses. We are perhaps even
tempted now and then to discount their utterances too freely.
But, of all ancient historians, the one on whom it is hardest
to exercise a sound judgment is Thucydides. His weighty
seriousness (not to mention other qualities) is apt to disconcert
criticism. For instance, we learn much indirectly from his
speeches, but we treat them as mainly his own compositions
made to suit certain characters and certain occasions. We are
tempted to think that his use of fiction based on inference
ends with these set orations. But, if we turn to the story of
Alcibiades' influence on Tissaphernes, we see the same method

The Teaching of Ancient History. 37

more subtilly disguised. Here are two arrant rogues in con-
ference. That a third person was admitted is surely quite
inconceivable. The account must either come from one of the
principals, neither of whom was likely to tell the truth with
honest intent : or from inference drawn by the writer or his
direct informant. The context1 of the passage (viii. 46) makes
the latter alternative highly probable. We may perhaps con-
clude that, even in Thucydides, what seems to be a narrative
of attested facts may now and then be little more than acute,
and probably correct, inference. In short, high literary qualities
and trustworthy historical evidence are things wholly distinct :
and this truism can never be too constantly borne in mind by
the teacher or student of Ancient History.

Speaking of literature reminds us of the most important of
all the departments of history, the history of Thought. Intel-
lectual and political movements are always acting and reacting
on each other, and the continuity of history is sometimes most
clearly seen in intellectual movements that do not for a long
time appear on the surface of political life. They commonly
have a moral side, and what touches life in the long run touches
politics. Hence the immense interest of the early Greek
Sophists. Here we find the beginnings of that long question-
ing of Man, of the State, of popular theology and popular
morals, that ends in cosmopolitanism and a practical mono-
theism. The way is being prepared for the recognition of one
great emperor on earth and one great God in heaven. The
individual is beginning to assert himself, and the narrow city
patriotism of the Greek enters on a period of sad but necessary
decay. Great movements such as this find insufficient notice
in ordinary manuals of history. They go on over so great a
space of time, and spread over so wide an area, that it is hard
to keep the attention fixed on them, and they commonly
receive only scattered reference in the separate histories of
Greece and Rome. There is work here for a teacher to do.

1 Chapters 87-8 should also be read in connexion with this passage.

38 The Teaching of Ancient History.

If he does no more than make fairly clear the enormous
power of Greek influences in Roman life and Roman history
from the age of the Gracchi to the age of the Antonines, he
will have done what is worth doing. He will have to treat of
men of action as well as men of thought : and with the writer
and the teacher he will have to place the freedman and the
slave. He will range from theories of virtue to the ministry of
pleasures : he will see the Roman love of precedent and order
combining with wider views and a scientific bent, and the
result a gradual reform of Law. He will have to illustrate the
subtle variety of Greek influences in the case of such contem-
poraries as Cicero and Atticus, Cato and Brutus, and last not
least in the clearsighted and serene cosmopolitanism of Julius
Caesar.

It is often asked, when should Ancient History be supposed
to begin? Can a practical line be drawn? Archaeology over-
laps what we can strictly call History, but it goes much further
back : it revels in the 'prehistoric' So too Anthropology, of
which in its widest sense History is but a branch. I must ask
indulgence for an attempt to fix the beginning of History
proper by the criterion of our beginning to know something
of a people's thoughts and ideals. This view may derive
support from the deep interest so long taken in the great
'Homeric question.' That interest does not shew much sign of
flagging. We long to know whose voice or voices are speaking
to us. How much is due to imagination, how much is a
picture of real life? What are the approximate dates of the
poems ? What age do they profess to represent ? And so on,
question after question. Surely we feel that the history of the
Greeks is beginning for us, when we read what the Greeks
themselves treasured as the earliest voices of their race.

The first and most obvious use of the study of Ancient
History is that it prepares the way for an intelligent study of
later times. It has, however, in and for itself, a high edu-
cational value. The very defects of record that often make

The Teaching of Ancient History. 39

a certain conclusion unattainable are from this point of view a
recommendation. Doubtful footing calls for careful walking,
and the cautious inferences and frequent suspension of judg-
ment unavoidable in Ancient History render it undeniably
helpful in the training of a sober mind. Fair abilities and a
sound elementary education must of course be presupposed in
the student. History belongs rather to the later than to the
earlier stages of a wholesome educational scheme. I shall
decline the impertinence of offering general advice to teachers.
Let me rather conclude with the harmless commonplace that as
the teacher cannot do without books so books cannot at present
do without the man.

THE TEACHING OF ECONOMIC
HISTORY.

i. By the publication of the Wealth of Nations Adam
Smith convinced the English public that Political Economy
had a right to an independent place in the circle of the
sciences ; in a similar way it was through the work of James
Edward Thorold Rogers that Economic History came to be
recognized in England as a separate branch of investigation.
His monumental History of Agriculture and Prices, together
with such special studies as the First Nine Years of the Bank
of England, forced men to feel that the abundant materials he
made available had been too long neglected ; while his Six
Centuries and Economic Interpretation of History shewed that
the new method of investigation might throw much fresh
suggestion and interesting side-lights on the most familiar
periods of English history. Before his epoch-making work on
Agriculture and Prices appeared, these questions had been
regarded by English writers as an interesting topic for occasional
and incidental remark; but he demonstrated effectively that
this subject is deserving of the serious attention it now receives
from the general historian, and that it demands separate and
independent treatment, so that its bearing may be properly
brought out.

2. There had been various causes at work which had
rendered Englishmen less ready than Continental scholars to
attempt to remedy their neglect of the economic side of national

The Teaching of Economic History. 41

life1. Historians were apt to leave such phenomena on one
side, because they found so little material in the sources to
which they habitually turned. The facts about economic
changes have often been recorded, but they are rarely
chronicled. The changes from natural to money economy,
and the rise of a class of free labourers in England, were slow
processes extending over many centuries. These movements
were for the most part so gradual that they eluded the ob-
servation of contemporary writers. They were, moreover,
movements that were brought about unconsciously, and cannot
be ascribed to the deliberate policy of any known individual,
and they are therefore unassociated with any great name.
The personal element was for the most part lacking ; and the
annalist, who recorded the doings of men, was apt to treat
economic affairs as the mere setting of a drama that derived its
interest from the play of passion and the triumph of the strong
man or the wise ruler. The chronicles published by the Master
of the Rolls rarely furnished the necessary data ; and even
when they happened to include occasional reference to economic
affairs, it was difficult for the modern student to find a clue to
the meaning of the incidents recorded. Nor could the student
of history obtain much help in this matter from the English
economists. The classical school, with Mill as its last repre-
sentative, professed to study the facts of modern society; it
was only on the assumption of free competition that their
principles and terminology would apply, or that, as they held,
any economic science was possible. It was thus that they
dismissed the conditions of earlier days to a supposed age of
custom as a dreary limbo which the light of science could
never hope to penetrate. There were, of course, authors like
Finlay, who had a keen insight into the economic side of
human affairs j but quotations of prices, and market regula-
tions and financial expedients were for the most part such

1 Compare my article Why had Roscher so Little Influence in England?
in the Annals of the American Academy of Political Science, 1894.

42 The Teaching of Economic History.

unintelligible details that the historian was apt to put them on
one side, while the economist could not give effective aid in the
effort to analyse, to describe and to coordinate such obscure
phenomena.

3. Both from the nature of the recorded information on
which we have to rely and from the character of the results
sought for, Economic History must be dealt with as a separate
branch of study, if it is to be properly treated at all. To make
this claim is not to advocate any revolutionary change in the
conception of History as a whole. We may plead for the
careful and thorough examination of this one aspect, without
forgetting that it is only an aspect ; or even without contend-
ing that this has in itself more importance than other lines of
historical research. Economic History deals with the physical
side of the life of communities and of individuals : it dwells on
the practical use and misuse of national resources, and the suc-
cesses and failures due to financial experiments ; and it brings
into prominence the fundamental influence in social affairs of
the need of food and shelter and the requirements which man
feels in common with lower animals. For many of us, how-
ever, the chief attraction of historical study is due to the
elements that are distinctively human ; it lies in the growth of
polities, in the institutions for administering justice and for
organizing mutual defence, in personal aims and national
aspirations and the effort to realize them. There is doubtless
the closest connexion and interrelation between the institu-
tional or religious development of a people and its material
progress ; but after all, the Body Politic, with the institutions
by which free men govern themselves, is a more admirable
creation of Reason than the Economic Organism in which
men cater for each other's needs. The development of the
State is the final object of research ; but the more thoroughly
we apply ourselves to political and constitutional history, the
more necessary will it be at every point to take account of the
results obtained by the study of Economic History. We may

The Teaching of Economic History'. 43

devote ourselves to this branch of work not as an end in itself,
but because we regard it as a necessary means for getting a
clearer view of the actual development of the State. We may
recognise its real importance without regarding it as supreme ;
we may take account of economic forces, while we decline to
admit that the pressure of physical needs has been the main
factor in determining the course of human affairs1.

4. Economic History, though not of paramount or exclu-
sive importance, yet rightly claims the serious attention of
students. It brings into light the reasons for military or
political action that would otherwise be obscure, and thus
helps to render the whole course of human affairs more intelli-
gible. The failure of Charles V.'s schemes for the mainte-
nance of the ancient regime in Germany and his personal loss
of prestige, were directly due to the exhaustion of his credit
with the Fuggers of Augsburg. The financial difficulties of the
papacy in the fifteenth century had not a little to do with the
widespread sale of indulgences and the scandals which roused
Luther to action. Economic analysis invariably has the effect
of turning the attention from that which lies on the surface to
the deeper influences that are less easily observed. These
forces are all the more potent because their action is often
gradual and sometimes cumulative ; it is easy for the student
to leave them out of sight till the description of some sudden
crisis forces them on his notice ; but it is necessary to take
account of the beginnings and stages in Economic develop-
ment if we would understand constitutional changes and
foreign and domestic policy. Industrial and commercial
affairs must for convenience sake be treated apart, but they
cannot be omitted, if the course of History is to be rendered
intelligible and the study is to be conducted in a scientific spirit.

When we once take our stand consciously on the economic
platform we are able, with comparatively little effort, to get
into close touch with the men of past ages. There is often a
1 Cunningham, Growth of Industry and Commerce, I. 12.

44 The Teaching of Economic History.

strange sense of bewilderment in studying the religious ideas
or even the moral judgments current in bygone times ; the
influence of omens on the fortunes of war in ancient days is
unintelligible to us ; the contrast between the high ideals and
the grossness of medieval life is a shock to our sensibility ; and
even in modern days we are confused by the different concep-
tions of liberty and justice which are found in different coun-
tries. But the practical problems which men have to face are
very similar in all ages : the chief requirements of human life,
food, shelter and clothing, involve the use of the same pro-
ducts and a similar struggle with nature ; the husbandry and
cattle-breeding of different peoples are alike; the industrial
arts — mining and smelting, spinning and weaving — have only
undergone considerable change in countries where the era of
invention has made its mark. With a little effort we can place
ourselves in thought on the industrial level of primitive man.
So, too, wherever the use of money and the development of
credit have come into vogue at all they have had analogous
effects on commercial practice. Indeed, we may press the
matter further and say that the forms of economic organization
which have been developed among different peoples are singu-
larly alike ; the household, as a social unit with no economic
independence in its parts, is found in all ages, though the
functions it subserves have been greatly restricted in modern
times ; city life, with its enormous resources, and its possibili-
ties of administrative corruption, has been a feature common
to all high civilizations. In their ideals and aspirations men differ
fundamentally ; but the touch of practical necessity makes the
whole world kin ; the limitations imposed by physical needs
are similar for all peoples; the opportunities afforded by natural
resources in one age resemble those offered in another, though
there is a growth in the power of appreciating and using them.
The organs and the methods which human society has deve-
loped at different times for dealing with industrial problems
are closely analogous. Hence, while the historian must often

The Teaching of Economic History. 45

treat of things that are unfamiliar, he will find that in this
practical sphere the habits and institutions of the past have
much in common with affairs that lie within present day expe-
rience. The economic interpretation of history not only helps
to call attention to underlying tendencies, but brings the men
of the distant past on to a plane where we can, if we try, enter
most closely into their interests and find their action thoroughly
comprehensible.

5. To the student of the past economic research offers
many advantages, not only in the assistance it may give in
interpreting particular epochs and incidents, but from the
manner in which it presents the continuity of History. Man's
enthusiasms and opinions and passions are subject to frequent,
and sometimes violent change ; but in so far as his relations to
his physical environment are concerned, his activities must be
steadily maintained from month to month and year to year.
Each season the grain has been sowed and the harvest reaped
with more or less success : there has been no break in the
recurrence of agricultural operations or of industrial life. So
too, the lines of communication which have once been opened
by trade are not easily interrupted, but serve after long ages
for the intercourse of peoples and the transmission of culture.
These physical conditions remain very much the same ; and
the constitution of human society, in so far as it is organized
with reference to these matters, has a remarkable persistence.
There has been a perpetuation of the manual arts from sheer
necessity, and a transmission of particular forms of skill among
new peoples, as well as a transplanting of institutions that are
congruent with particular phases of industrial life. This process
has involved constant adaptation and modification : but, till a
century ago, it has been a gradual readjustment without sudden
breaks or violent changes1. By no other line of historical

1 The age of geographical discovery may be taken as the exception that
proves the rule, and it was only brought about through long and conscious
effort.

46 The Teaching of Economic History.

study is the continuity of human history and the organic
connexion of the past and present so clearly exhibited.

6. To the man of affairs Economic History may prove of
interest from quite another reason — by furnishing a clue to
unfamiliar habits and practice in the present day. The
expansion of Western Civilization has brought Europeans and
Americans into the closest contact with many barbarous and
half-civilized peoples, whose usages and habits are strange to
us. For purposes of trade it is convenient to understand their
methods of dealing; while the administrator who rules over
them cannot easily see how the incidence of taxation will be
distributed in their communities or what are the possibilities of
social oppression against which it is necessary to guard. Some
of the most regrettable blunders of the English govern-
ment in India have been due to an inability to understand the
working of native institutions. A careful study of the past of
our own race, or of the earlier habits of other peoples when
natural economy still reigned, would at least have suggested a
point of view from which the practical problems in India might
be more wisely looked at. By means of analogies drawn from
the past we may come to understand the advantage, under
certain circumstances, of fiscal methods that seem to be cum-
brous, and the danger of introducing modern improvements in
a polity that is not prepared to assimilate them.

7. Since the teaching of Economic History as an inde-
pendent branch of study has been so recently introduced, there
has hardly been enough experience to warrant any definite
conclusions about the best methods of instruction, especially
as the subject belongs to different groups in the curricula of
different Universities. At Harvard, in the new Cambridge, it
is treated as a branch of Economics, and attended by those
who have some familiarity with modern Economics ; in the
old Cambridge it is hardly taken up by the best economic
students at all, while it forms a part of the regular course for
the Historical Tripos, though it is not a necessary subject in

The Teaching of Economic History. 47

that department. It appears, however, that there are three lines
of inquiry which the student should be encouraged to pursue,
if he is to be properly equipped for making use of this branch
of knowledge, either in connexion with historical research or in
the practical business of life.

a. It seems desirable that he should become acquainted
with the economic development of some one particular country
from its earliest beginnings. The change from natural to
money economy and its effects can be examined most clearly
when the field is limited ; the various social organisms, — such
as the household, the city, and the nation,— can be best com-
prehended in their several characters, and their mutual relations
can be most easily understood when they are seen in a limited
area. The various economic institutions, — merchant gilds, and
misteries, staples, and regulated companies, — may be treated
with greater precision when they are separated from analogous
but different associations. And if one country is to be thus
selected it is clear that England has special claims to be taken
as the type. The mass of recorded evidence which is available
in England is very large, and there is extant information on
many points that cannot apparently be treated with the same
definiteness in other lands. England is so far isolated by her
position that it is possible to trace her debt to other countries
with comparative certainty, while the rapidity and the extent
of the growth of her industrial prosperity make English history
an appropriate field for observing this line of progress. English
Economic History, as giving the type of the actual development
of one society, is a natural basis for all instruction in this de-
partment.

b. It is also necessary that the student should have an
acquaintance with economic terminology and be habituated to
economic analysis, so as to have the means of describing the
phenomena of the past and of stating the economic causes of
growth or decay. The Classical Economists were at no pains
to state their doctrines in a form in which they could be of

48 The Teaching of Economic History.

service to the investigator of history ; they concentrated their
attention on modern society and assumed the existence of free
competition in formulating their principles; and they were
consequently unable to provide the necessary phraseology for
discussing other phases of human progress. But they did not
say the last word. Modern Economists have discarded this
restriction, and endeavour to enlarge the subject-matter of the
science and to take account of the human race in all stages
of its progress1. Even for the thorough understanding of the
special conditions to which the classical writers confined their
attention, it is necessary to include a large range of phenomena
which they ignored. Since Economists have begun to treat
modern problems in their proper place as the most recent
phase of a long-continued process, they have gradually pro-
vided a scientific economic terminology which is directly
applicable to bygone times.

c. The student who is acquainted with one concrete type
of economic development, and has an adequate nomenclature
at his command, should be encouraged to enlarge his know-
ledge by studying other societies, and especially to obtain a
survey in outline of the contribution of each people to the
economic history of the world. He may thus get a clearer
grasp of the institutions with which he has already become
acquainted, by comparing them with their analogues ; he will
trace the action of similar causes in different places or at
different times, and thus gauge their importance more truly,
while he will get a clearer view of the unity of history and
of the part which each people has played in the progress of the
race2.

8. From the foregoing paragraphs it will have already

1 K. Biicher, Entstehung, 8.

8 Each of these topics has formed part of the regular instruction in
Cambridge ; and for each I have attempted to provide a small text-book,
(a) Outlines of English Industrial History (with E. A. McArthur),
\b) Modem Civilisation in its Economic Aspects, (c) Western Civilisation.

The Teaching of Economic History. 49

appeared that in the opinion of the writer, Economic History
is not a branch of learning which can be wisely included in a
school course. There are of course many economic phenomena
which may be usefully attended to by the teacher; but the
subject is deficient in direct human interest, and deals with the
deeper and less obvious causes of change ; it may well be
deferred till it can be entered on as a subject of academic
study. And it has much to offer which renders it a valuable
medium of instruction at the University ; it necessarily brings
the student face to face with many problems in the weighing of
evidence ; it forces him to feel the supreme importance of
documents as a source of information, and to realize the diffi-
culties in interpreting them aright. It may also prove of value
in rousing the interest of students in their work, by bringing
them into closer touch with the men of bygone days — their
methods of work and habits of business. In so far as it
renders the past less bookish, and by shewing us men engaged
in familiar pursuits makes it more vivid, the economic aspect
of history may prove attractive to beginners who find the de-
velopment of constitutional liberties comparatively uninspiring.
Lastly, it may be pointed out that it offers an ample field
for students to make their first essays in planning and carry-
ing out an original investigation. From the very fact that
Economic History has only recently received due recognition
there are many points in this branch of research which demand
much fuller examination than they have yet received ; and
some of these can be usefully dealt with in moderate compass.
The inquirer, who has a little skill and patience at command,
may hope to find a definite task on which to try his unaided
powers, and the subject that attracts him most is likely to be that
in which he will do his best. When viewed from this standpoint,
we may see that the Economic History is proving an admirable
medium for the self-education of those who have taken their
degrees and desire to pursue their studies further. The former
students of the Cambridge Historical School have compiled
a. 4

50 T/te Teaching of Economic History.

during the last ten years a considerable number of interesting
monographs, and their work in the field of Economic History
has been productive of some results that are likely to prove of
permanent value. The method of training has been tentative,
and it will doubtless be greatly improved by longer experience ;
but when tried by this test it seems to have had a measure of
success.

THE TEACHING OF
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY1.

To those who hold that history is one and indivisible, to
speak of constitutional history is an offence. If Freeman said
that there was no such thing as ancient history, his successors
protest against ecclesiastical, constitutional, economic, or
military history. The extremists go so far as to refuse us
national history, and would make the true standpoint of the
historian international.

The position is at any rate an arguable one. It is a matter
of vital importance in our national history that England was
for centuries consciously a part of the Church Universal, and
it may be said that the historian should not be encouraged to
relegate this fact and its vast consequences to a separate
volume. ^ The history of the Church is closely connected with
the history of the constitution, and that again with the history
of industry. Military history can scarcely be treated apart
from State policy, and in some periods dynastic history seems
at first sight almost to cover the whole ground.

But what is philosophically desirable is not always practically
possible, and though the historian can sometimes afford to be
a philosopher, the teacher of history must be a man of business.

1 The writer desires gratefully to acknowledge the suggestive criticism
of Mr Stanley M. Leathes, of Trinity College, Cambridge, to whom this
chapter was submitted in manuscript.

4—2

52 The Teaching of Constitutional History.

Experience shews that as a matter of business subdivision is
essential, and we can quote against the philosophers one of
themselves. 'Above all things,' says Bacon1, ' order, and dis-
tribution, and singling out of parts, is the life of despatch : so
as the distribution be not too subtile ; for he that doth not
divide will never enter well into business, and he that divideth
too much will never come out of it clearly.' English con-
stitutional history is by tradition the backbone of the Cambridge
Historical Tripos, and a continuous experience of many years
has proved that it can be taught efficiently as a subject by
itself, without the separation doing violence to the sense of
proportion, or obscuring its true relation to the larger subject
of which it is a part.

In the Cambridge school division has indeed been carried
further, and English constitutional history has itself been
divided at a.d. 1485, the earlier subject being assigned to
Part I. of the Tripos, and the later to Part II. This involves
their being taught in different years and by different lecturers.
Perhaps a.d. 1485 originally became the landmark because it
was the point at which Stubbs ended and Hallam began, but
without venturing to dispute the question with the high
authorities who prefer a.d. 1509, we may hold that the
separation between medieval and modern history may be
looked for not very far from this point. The reign of
Henry VII. marks the surrender of feudal decentralisation to
the forces of government, and the end of private war. It is
true that Green places his ' new monarchy ' earlier and makes
Henry VII. an imitator of Edward IV., but Edward IV.'s
reign left the factions unreconciled and the dynastic quarrel
still alive, while Henry VII. 's claim to be the founder of a new
monarchy rests on the achievement of a united kingdom, an
assured succession, and independence of foreign interference.
The influence of the Renaissance and the New Learning point

1 Essays Civil and Moral, xxv. ' Of Despatch. '

The Teaching of Constitutional History. 53

in the same direction. The discovery of the New World was
making it no longer possible to believe that the whole drama
of human action had been played on a narrow stage. This
one event, as has been pointed out often enough, must have
involved a reconstruction of men's ways of thinking analogous
to that which was to take place later in a different sphere,
when the Copernican theories revealed the immense extension
of the Universe in space, and the relative insignificance of the
planet which had hitherto been deemed the only world, lying
under its 'majestical roof fretted with golden fire.' And it
was just now that the printing-press was beginning to admit
the many to share the speculations of the few. Thus, in spite
of the survival of chivalry at the English Court — the accounts
of Hall and Holinshed read like the Morte £ Arthur1 —
Henry VII. and his son may be classed as modern princes.
Even the notion of the expansion of England begins with the

1 ' On the first day of May the king, accompanied with many lusty
bachelors on great* and well-doing horses, rode to the wood to fetch May;
where a man might have seen many a horse raised on high, with carrier,
gallop, turn, and stop, marvellous to behold.... And as they were returning
on the hill a ship met with them under sail. The master hailed the king
and that noble company, and said that he was a mariner, and was come
from many a strange port, and came thither to see if any deeds of arms
were to be done in the country, of the which he might make true
report in other countries.' The ship is called Fame, and is laden with
'good Renown.' ' Then said the herald : If you will bring your ship into the
bay of Hardiness you must double the point of Gentleness, and there you
shall see a company that will meddle with your merchandise. Then said
the king: Sithens Renown is their merchandise let us buy it if we can.
Then the ship shot a peal of guns, and sailed forth before the king's
company full of flags and banners till it came to the tiltyard....Then began
the trumpets to sound and the horses to run, that many a spear was brast

and many a great stripe given On the third day the queen made a great

banket to the king and all them that had justed ; and after the banket
done she gave the chief prize to the king, the second to the Earl of Essex,
the third to the Earl of Devonshire, and the fourth to the lord Marquess
Dorset. Then the heralds cried : My lords, for your noble feats in arms God
send you the love of your ladies that you most desire.' (Holinshed, p. 809).

54 The Teaching of Constitutional History.

Tudors, and Lord Herbert of Cherbury makes the statesmen
of 1 5 1 1 say : ' When we would enlarge ourselves let it be that
way we can, and to which it seems the Eternal Providence
hath destined us; which is, by sea'1.

But it is not suggested that the division of constitutional
history for purposes of teaching into two halves is ideally the
best method. The considerations that make it necessary are
at bottom practical considerations. Just as in research the
medievalist and the modernist are inevitable products of needful
specialisation, so in teaching it is scarcely possible that the
whole of English constitutional history should be thoroughly
well done by one man — at any rate if University standards are
to be maintained.

From the teacher's point of view it is a notable fact that of
late years English constitutional history has become at once
more interesting and of higher educational value. If recol-
lections of the undergraduate's standpoint as it was twenty
years ago are to be trusted, the earlier part of the subject was
deposited in three sacred volumes, which were approached by
the devout disciple in much the same spirit as that in which
the youthful Brahmin draws near to the Vedas. To read the
first volume of Stubbs was necessary to salvation ; to read the
second was greatly to be desired ; the third was reserved for
the ambitious student who sought to accumulate merit by
unnatural austerities — but between them they covered the
whole ground. The lecturer lectured on Stubbs; the com-
mentator elucidated him ; the crammer boiled him down.
Within those covers was to be found the final word on every
controversy, and in this faith the student moved serene.

Had our classic been less learned, less comprehensive, less
profound, such a superstition could scarcely have grown up
round a single treatise, but it was a beneficent superstition
while it lasted, and not a few of the generation now middle-

1 Life and Reign of King Henry the Eighth, 18.

Tlie Teaching of Constitutional History. 55

aged can trace back their first notion of what is meant by the
judicial treatment of a complex case to a reverential study of
Stubbs's Constitutional History. But controversy has its uses
in education, and it is not good that all questions should be
settled in advance by authority. An exposition of the reasons
why A is wrong may be of more educational value than a
statement of the fact that B is right, and it is fortunate that
recent research in this subject has increased the number of
questions that may be debated and has at the same time in-
tensified the interest of the debates. What were once the official
views have been attacked, and brilliantly attacked, at many
points. By the History of English Law, and Domesday Book
and Beyond, to say nothing of Roman Canon Law in the Church
of England, and his other contributions to legal history, Professor
Maitland has laid students of the English constitution under
obligations that are incalculable. Mr Horace Round has
revolutionised our views on knight service, the hundred, and a
variety of kindred matters. Other writers have exhibited the
extraordinary difficulty of questions that once seemed to belong
to the category of problems solved. It has been the business
of the teachers to bring the new knowledge to bear on the
old conclusions, and to shew how far and why these are to
be modified, and the result has been to create a new atmo-
sphere of criticism in the lecture-room. It is perhaps fanciful
to detect a difference in the educational product, and to
suggest that under the new order the student has become more
inquiring, more acute, and less easily satisfied with the regular
formulae.

Ever since the beginning the Cambridge school has set
great store by the study of documents, and this we owe to the
early pioneers. For many years Stubbs's Select Charters was
the corner-stone of the structure, though as the volume did
not deal with the 14th and 15th centuries, supplied no detailed
comment, and might easily be strengthened, especially in pre-
Norman periods, a good deal was left for the teacher to do.

56 The Teaching of Constitutional History.

Then came Dr S. R. Gardiner's Constitutional Documents of
the Puritan Revolution, 1625 — 1660; and not long after
Dr G. W. Prothero published Statutes and Constitutional
Documents, 1559 — 1625, with its full and suggestive Intro-
duction. The Reformation statutes are be found in Docu-
ments illustrative oj English Church History, compiled by
Mr H. Gee and Mr W. J. Hardy, but a convenient volume
of papers for the Restoration and Hanoverian periods is yet
to seek. With the original papers actually at hand it is
possible to achieve something remotely analogous to laboratory
work, and to illustrate the processes by which history is really
made. At the same time the ancient phrases and the con-
ceptions of other days help to furnish a background and an
atmosphere to the young historian. In this way better than in
obedience to express precept the conviction with which he
starts is gradually abandoned that all historical problems are
capable of being stated in terms of Victorian politics.

Nevertheless it is important that the teacher of constitutional
history, while appreciating the need of antiquarian research,
should also be on his guard against its dangers. It is necessary
as an aid and a commentary, but it should not be allowed to be-
come the principal subject of interest and study. It is scarcely
too much to say that there are things which a student must be
told, but which it is most undesirable that he should make an
effort to remember. For instance, if the teacher explains to him
the exact nature of the writ praecipe and of 'prerogative wardship,'
it should not be with a view to his retaining their technicalities
in his mind, but rather to illustrate and make more real the
relation between the King and the under-lords. The chief
difficulty is that of satisfying the need for solidity and con-
nectedness without overburdening the memory. This last
danger is increased by the fact that the principal authorities
for early constitutional history are laws and edicts. This sets
up a tendency to wander too far into legal matters, instead of
devoting this wasted energy to an attempt to understand the

The Teaching of Constitutional History. 57

conditions under which these laws and edicts worked, and the
manner of their administration. It is true that it may be im-
possible to discover these, but the attempt must be made, and
until it has been made it is dangerous to accept a law as an ulti-
mate, dominating fact, as if it were a nineteenth century statute.

Another point of importance to the teacher — especially to
the teacher of earlier constitutional history — is the necessity
of accentuating the difference between medieval habits of mind
and life and modern. It is desirable that the student should
learn to sympathise with Becket, and even with Richard II. j it
is not good that he should side as a partisan, even with Simon
de Montfort. The natural tendency to become enthusiastic
over liberal and modern movements in medieval history is so
strong that the teacher will do wisely to lay stress, even to
exaggeration, upon the fundamental differences.

It may not be superfluous to mention also the risk which
the student of earlier constitutional history runs of substituting
words and expressions for ideas. Absolute darkness often
lurks behind the easy use of such phrases as 'feudal,' 'manorial,'
'parliamentary,' 'representative,' and yet it is possible by the
use of them to make an appearance of knowledge. It will be
part of the business of the judicious teacher to expose these
impostures, and to make sure that the terms sum up knowledge
instead of serving as a substitute for it. He will also be careful
to realise the necessity of clearly distinguishing facts that are
ascertained, from inferences which however probable are not
certain. The immature student aches for a dogma and yearns
for simplicity. He must learn by painful repetition that dog-
matic assertion about the facts of medieval history is too often
false, and that medieval life was hardly more simple than modern.

There is another danger that arises where the teaching of
a subject like English constitutional history becomes too
merely antiquarian. The student who investigates origins and
machinery may easily lose his sense of proportion, and cease to
appreciate the relation of his special department to all that

58 The Teaching of Constitutional History.

lies outside it. In Cambridge a corrective to this is found in
the still unexhausted influence of Seeley among the teachers
who were once his pupils. His habit was to seek for tendencies
and causes. He preferred what he called ' large considera-
tions,' and was more at home in dealing with a century than a
decade. The whole drift of his mind was towards the sug-
gestive treatment of large phenomena rather than the minute
investigation of details. His most characteristic course of
lectures as Regius Professor of Modern History was one on
the Holy Roman Empire, delivered in the academical year
1879—80, in which he began with the fall of Rome before the
barbarians and ended with a lecture on the characteristics of
modern democracy. Thus it would be difficult for a pupil of
Seeley's, while dealing with a department and expounding the
importance of documents, to lose touch altogether with the
general course of events in history. In describing the Church
settlement of Elizabeth, for instance, a teacher of this school
would not be content with the Acts of Supremacy and Uni-
formity and the terms of the Prayer-book and the Articles.
He would point out that the Church of Elizabeth was an island
Church, as unlike the Churches of Zurich and Geneva on
the one side as she was to the Church of Rome on the other —
the Prayer-book gathered from ancient sources, the tone
of her devotion widely different from the spirit of continental
Church worship, the ' organic relation with Catholic antiquity '
carefully preserved. As one has well said, the Church of
Elizabeth was isolated ' from the rest of Christendom,
and cut off from the flow of its religious thought. She was
not Catholic, as countries which accepted the decrees of
the Council of Trent understood Catholicism ; still less was
she Protestant, as Calvin or William the Silent understood
Protestantism1.' It is a narrow view that rules out of the
province of the teacher of constitutional history general facts
of this order of importance. He is concerned primarily, it is
1 H. O. Wakeman, The Church and the Puritans, p. ir.

The Teaching of Constitutioftal History. 59

true, with the constitutional machinery of the Church, but it is
essential that he should deal, however briefly, with the place
of the Church in the order of Christendom, and her relation to
the other bodies which the Reformation created.

To take another illustration — the teacher of English con-
stitutional history is mainly concerned with the causes which
led to the Revolution of 1688, the curious quasi-legal procedure
by which it was effected, and its immediate and ultimate results
upon the constitution of the 18th century. But the Revolution
was also an event of the utmost importance in European
history, an episode in the conflict with Louis XIV. William
of Orange did not come to England as William the Conqueror
came — to obtain for himself a better inheritance. His expedition
was in a manner a daring attempt to occupy one of the vital
strategic positions in the battlefield of Europe — to appropriate
the resources and fleet of England for the benefit of the
combination against France.

The point is that though as a matter of business it is con-
venient to teach history by departments, it is not well that the
teacher should be troubled by too fine a sense of relevance.
The development of institutions may be his main concern, but
he must not lose sight of the relation of the parts to the whole.
Thus in spite of his documents and his antiquarianism, he is
not cut off from the great, the stirring, the dramatic aspects of
history. He is not so completely absorbed in musty records
that he has no eye for the great elemental forces. It is there-
fore possible for his work to stimulate thought and imagination
as well as to promote accuracy. Though vitally interested in
the minutiae of his subject, he finds himself also concerned
with ' large considerations.' This perhaps is the answer to the
question how constitutional history can be brought to bear
effectively upon the average student, who is suspicious of
documents and is apt to be bored by details. If the teaching
is pedantic and narrow, history is a lost cause with him. If it
gives him a reason for his work, explains to what purpose facts

60 The Teaching of Constitutional History.

are to be mastered, exhibits the relation of his subject to the
general drift of things, there is a fair chance that the dull
imagination may be quickened and the dry bones may live.

It is good that the teacher of constitutional history should
look beyond the limits of his department, but it is also good
that he should allow his mind to play freely within it. While
avoiding what is fanciful, he must keep an open mind for
analogies and contrasts that are really suggestive. These are
specially to be desired after the death of Queen Anne, when
the reign of dulness sets in. The ultimate dependence of the
Prime Minister upon Parliament is a point that gains in interest
if it is contrasted with the days when a minister, unless sup-
ported by a popular rising, depended wholly upon the king, so
that for Wolsey it was as true as for the Eastern vizier that
1 in the light of the king's countenance ' was life, and his wrath
'as messengers of death1.' And the same official's supreme
position and monopoly of affairs is the more striking when we
are reminded that it was made a matter of complaint against
Buckingham in Charles I.'s reign that he was — what the modern
Prime Minister is recognised to be — a ' monopolist of counsels,'
a ' blazing star very exorbitant in the affairs of this Common-
wealth.'

The habit of allowing the mind thus to range freely over a
great area is not without its perils for weaker students. Super-
ficial generalisation, the hunt for distant analogies, the eloquent
development of misleading contrasts — these have a dangerous
fascination ; and a pernicious taste for the dramatic may be
easily acquired. But constitutional history is heavily ballasted
with facts, and it is impossible to make a fair show in it without

1 Brewer points out that it is when the king first frowns on him that
Shakespeare makes Wolsey say :

' I have touched the highest point of all my greatness ;
And from that full meridian of my glory
I haste now to my setting: I shall fall
Like a bright exhalation in the evening,
And no man see me more.'

The Teaching of Constitutional History. 61

some solid reading. Thus the risks are on the whole far less
than in some other subjects, and after all it is possible to
sacrifice too much to safety, for the best things are missed by
those who refuse to leave the beaten track. We cannot afford
to neglect any reasonable means of rousing the interest and
stimulating the imagination, and what helps the stronger men
to firmness of grasp and independence of judgment must not
be set on one side in the supposed interests of the weaker
brethren. There are many ways of repressing exuberance, and
the nature of the subject will prevent anyone going very far
wrong. The teacher of constitutional history is obliged to be
systematic ; there is no reason why he should not do his best
to be suggestive also.

It should be noted in this connexion that in later con-
stitutional history the natural order of treatment is not for
the most part chronological. In the Tudor period the
Reformation stands as a chapter by itself. Ministers and
Council, the Star Chamber, Judicature and Police, the Law
of Treason, Ecclesiastical Courts, Local Government, Par-
liament, Finance, are all capable of treatment in separate
lectures. The history of the eighteenth and nineteenth cen-
turies can be dealt with in the same way. Three or four
lectures on the changes in the position and power of the Crown
since the death of Queen Anne give all that is needed in the
way of an outline of events ; the rest of the subject can be
treated under the history of separate institutions, such as the
Prime Minister, the Cabinet, Justice, Parliament, and the
like. The seventeenth century, however, presents peculiar
difficulties, and requires a different method. The whole
character of the period is dramatic, and the story must be
allowed to unfold itself according to the order of events. Here
the separate treatment of institutions will be abandoned, and
the lectures will have a different kind of title — Religious
Questions under James I., Political Questions under James I.,
Buckingham and Charles I., Non-parliamentary Government,

62 The Teaching of Constitutional History.

the Long Parliament and Reform, the Long Parliament and
Revolution, the Commonwealth, the Protectorate, the Restora-
tion, the Pension Parliament, the Exclusion Bill, the Revolution.
In planning out a course of lectures on later constitutional
history it will be found convenient to preface each of the three
main periods by an introductory lecture, avoiding details and
giving a preliminary survey of the ground. In the first of
these something may be said of the conditions under which the
Tudor system came to be established, — of 'livery and mainte-
nance,' the 'eating canker of want' which enfeebled the Lan-
castrian government, the historical importance of Fortescue,
the evidence of the Paston Letters, the humiliation of the
baronage after the wars of the Roses, and the dynastic position
of the first two Tudor kings. The introductory lecture on the
Stuart period would naturally deal with the changed conditions
of the seventeenth century as compared with the sixteenth.
The danger from great lords and their retainers had passed
away, and the long arm of the Privy Council reached into
every corner of the kingdom. What men needed now was not
protection from the great lords, but protection from the tyranny
of the power by which the great lords had been overthrown.
The results of the Reformation were now accepted. The long
reign of Elizabeth had brought the greater part of the nation
into the fold of the Church of England, and the adherents of
Rome were only a minority that had ceased to be dangerous.
There was no longer any serious danger of foreign invasion,
for one result of the Tudor period had been an improvement
in the defensible position of England. The successful rebellion
of the United Provinces against Spain had placed the ports of
Holland in the hands of a friendly Protestant power. Ireland,
the 'postern-gate' for Spain, had been reduced to order by
the vigorous Viceroys of Elizabeth; the Reformation had
separated Scotland from France, and the accession of James I.
had united her to England. Thus the England of the
Stuarts was an island such as Shakespeare had dreamed of

The Teaching of Constitutional History. 63

— compact within itself, 'in a great pool a swan's nest,'
'this precious stone set in the silver sea.' To those who
could not foresee the Civil War it must have seemed as
if trouble could only come from the Continent — no longer
from Scotland, or Ireland, or the 'local disturbances of
hostile lords.' A danger of Elizabeth's reign had been a
disputed succession, but the Stuart House succeeded without
opposition ; and unlike the childless Tudors the Stuarts
were ' enriched ' with ' a most royal progeny of most rare and
excellent gifts and forwardness.' Yet the race that now in-
herited the Crown of England was politically inferior, and at a
time when the changed conditions required the highest and
most far-seeing statesmanship, its members displayed qualities
of only the ordinary type. Meanwhile a rival power had been
growing up that was ready to take their authority out of their
hands. One of the great achievements of the Tudor period
had been the consolidation of Parliamentary institutions, and
in Parliament the House of Commons was becoming the most
important factor, for the country gentry and the commercial
classes had been elevated into political importance. And if
Parliament had grown strong enough in the sixteenth century
to be a rival to the Crown should need arise, in the seventeenth
century powerful motives began to operate to induce Parlia-
ment to take up an independent attitude— motives arising out
of two questions of the first importance, taxation and religion.
Yet there was nothing revolutionary about the tone of the
earlier Parliamentary leaders. It was not Pym and Hampden
who were the Jacobins of the Great Rebellion. Their business
was to deal with isolated abuses, and they did not realise at
once that their attacks upon individual grievances were taking
shape in a coherent policy, which was destined in the long run
to transfer the ultimate sovereignty from the Crown to Parlia-
ment, and so to shift the centre of gravity of the State. There
is no eager modernness about the statesmen of the Long
Parliament. They are not always applying abstract principles,

64 The Teaching of Constitutional History.

or periodically calling upon ancient institutions to justify their
existence. With them 'the novelty' though not rejected, was
'held for a suspect.' If circumstances had allowed them they
would have been well content to ' make a stand upon the
ancient way.'

The introductory lecture to the 18th and 19th centuries
may fairly deal with a variety of general considerations. It
might be remarked that the reason why the period is dull to
the student of constitutional history is because the striking
facts of English history are no longer constitutional facts. The
really great achievements of the 18th century are the industrial
revolution and the establishment of a world empire beyond
sea. The vital matters do not fall within the province of the
historian of the constitution ; they belong rather to the econo-
mist and the historian of foreign policy, and particularly of war.
It should be noted that before the Reform Bill the English
system is in the main aristocratic, and an attempt should be
made to bring out the importance of the House of Lords in the
political organisation, and the predominating influence of
individual peers in the composition of the House of Commons.
Last of all it should be shewn that what Gneist calls the 'cen-
tury of Reform and Reform Bills' was inaugurated by an
economic and social change, when the rural England of the
17th century, controlled by the country gentry, became the
industrial England of the early 19th century, controlled by
employers and capitalists. Great towns, as a picturesque
French writer puts it, 'shot up and spread with the rapidity of
a conflagration, shooting up like flames, and tending ever to
engulf each other1.' The political centre of gravity shifted
from the south to the north, and it became inevitable that a
constitution which made no provision for the new industrial

1 Boufmy, The English Constitution, p. 185. A note refers to a phrase
by Leon Faucher in his £tudes sur FAngleterre: 'Croissent comme la
flamme et ne cessent de tendre vers un abime de grandeur.'

The Teaching of Constitutional History. 65

England should undergo modification. The wonder is not
that this was done, but that it was done without a revolution. >

Such general considerations as these gain greatly in the
force and effectiveness of their presentation if they are ex-
pounded in special introductory lectures, instead of being
wedged among masses of detail, or appearing from time to
time as a digression from the history of particular institutions.
In constitutional history the danger of losing sight of the
general in the particular is a real one, and if it can be avoided,
even at the risk of repetition, the price is not too high.

What has been said of the teacher's method may perhaps
be conveniently supplemented at this point by a brief account
of the method recommended to the student. One of the
virtues most to be desired of him is orderliness; another is
the power of seeing things in due proportion, and so of
escaping the danger which besets those who lose themselves
in detail, and fail to see the wood for the trees. A third is the
power of getting at the heart of a book without reading every
word of it, but to this beginners should not aspire. " Some
books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few
to be chewed and digested : that is, some books are to be read
only in parts ; others to be read, but not curiously ; and some
few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention1." But
except for the fortunate possessors of Macaulay's memory,
what may be called arm-chair reading is, as a rule, worse
than useless. The student of history must work pen in hand.
It is perhaps best to begin with the largest possible note-book,
and enter in it either lecture notes or an analysis of a principal
text-book, writing only on one side of the page, and leaving
large spaces even there. This gives a general plan of the
subject, and into this general plan the results of the subsequent
reading should be worked — as analysis, or extracts, or refer-
ences. Thus into this note-book the fruits of all the student's
labours will be garnered, and when the time comes for reviewing
1 Bacon, Essays Civil and Moral, L. ' Of Studies.'

a. 5

66 The Teaching of Constitutional History.

what has been learned, there will be found within its covers all
the materials for an orderly revision of the subject. Memory
is a good thing, but unless the memory is exceptional, method
is better. The man who knows everything is a rare product of
education, and after all he is not much better off than the man
who knows where everything is to be found. Accurate knowledge
of causes and results in general is most often attained by the
student who takes the trouble to sort and arrange his details.
With rare exceptions the arm-chair reader is inaccurate both in
the general and in the particular. His memory is overburdened
with details, and he has no general plan.

It would be rash to formulate an iron rule of method, for
there are those who thrive on a habit of inspired disorder;
but for the average man it is good that he should apply business
principles to his work. And for the orderly arrangement of
topics a printed syllabus has been found invaluable. One of
the lecturers on early constitutional history at Cambridge has
been accustomed to furnish his class with two thirty-two page
pamphlets, the first covering the ground to a.d. 12 15 and the
second from a.d. 1215 to a.d. 1485. These include a list of
books recommended, a statement of the subject-matter of each
lecture, and short paragraphs on points of special difficulty,
with abundant references to the best sources of information. A
lecturer on later constitutional history adopts a less ambitious
plan, and confines himself to some twenty pages, but he also
provides a list of books recommended and a scheme of each
lecture.

Another feature of history-teaching in Cambridge is the
series of weekly or fortnightly papers or essays set by each
lecturer in connection with his class. These essays are not
compulsory, but in a class of 45 or 50 members as many as 25
or 30 will write them. The lecturer looks over the essays
beforehand, and then meets the writers privately, in groups of
three or four, for criticism and discussion. Not many have the
genius for this kind of oral teaching which is required to

The Teaching of Constitutional History. 67

produce the best results, but at the worst it is valuable for
purposes of revision, and it is not difficult to make it some-
thing more. Fresh problems may be introduced, and docu-
ments may be dealt with more thoroughly than is possible
under the formal conditions of the lecture-room. The
statutes of the Reformation Parliament, the history of the
Dissolution of the Monasteries, the importance of the State
Trials in the constitutional history of the 17th century, are
subjects which cannot be adequately treated in lecture because
the time available is not sufficient, but they can be made to
serve for the conversation class. The history of the Star
Chamber is generally misunderstood by the average student,
and it is convenient to have an opportunity of revising it. A
comparison between the political ideas of Pym and Shaftesbury,
or of Strafford and Cromwell, though open to the charge of
irrelevance, has been found to be stimulating. It is more
difficult to justify a digression on literary style. But experience
clearly shows that in most cases the time thus spent is spent to
advantage. The system encourages wider interests, sounder
knowledge, and a more chastened style of expression. And
this is in spite of the fact that here the Cambridge teacher
labours under a special disadvantage. Since history-lecturing
is intercollegiate — and this is to be defended on almost every
other ground — he is at close quarters with an alien folk who
belong to other Colleges, and with them constitutional history
is his only point of contact. His relations with these are
pleasant enough, and he may make a few friends among them,
but he does not acquire the intimate personal knowledge of
the individual which is an important element in successful oral
teaching. The criticism tends to be too polite, and it takes
too long to establish the necessary moral ascendency.

English constitutional history for the Historical Tripos is
treated in two academical years, and some 70 lectures are
allowed to each half of the subject. But mention should
also be made of a short course of 15 lectures on comparative

5—2

68 The Teaching of Constitutional History.

constitutions, which deals with the structure of different modern
forms of government and their manner of working. In this
course the English constitution is treated first ; but the order of
treatment is logical rather than historical, and stress is laid on
those features which suggest comparisons and contrasts with
the institutions of other States, as for instance, the legal
omnipotence of the British Parliament or the English form
of Cabinet government as compared with foreign imitations of
it. The constitution of the United States of America is studied
next, as the type of the maturer form of federal government,
and such points are emphasised as the checks imposed on the
will of the numerical majority, the comparatively independent
position of the Federal and State executives, the relation of the
Federal judiciary to the political departments of government,
the rights of individuals which are guaranteed by the Constitu-
tion, and the committee system of legislation. The more
advanced students are also encouraged to grapple with such
thorny questions as the true seat of American sovereignty and
the legal aspect of secession. The more notable of the modern
French constitutions are next compared ; what is native and
fundamental in them is distinguished from what is accidental or
the result of conscious imitation ; and the significance of recent
developments is explained. Attention is also given to such
problems as the anomalous position of the President as head
of the Executive, elected and at the same time irresponsible ;
the modern working of the principle of 'separation of powers';
the effect of the 'group' system in weakening Parliamentary
government ; and the extent and character of French centrali-
sation. The constitutions of the German Empire and Switzer-
land are also dealt with on the same scale ; the rest only for
purposes of illustration and comparison, and to show the drift
of modern constitutional changes. For students who have
already worked at English constitutional history this course
has been found of considerable use.

THE TEACHING OF HISTORY IN
SCHOOLS— AIMS.

In the teaching of History we are, we may assume, dis-
pensed from the need of asking a question obviously required
in the case of Mathematics or Classics, the question, namely,
whether we urge its claims on the ground of the value of the
subject for its own sake as information, or on the ground of
its worth as intellectual and moral discipline. The function of
the teacher of History in providing knowledge useful to the
learner is by me taken for granted : this essay deals with the
more strictly educational aims which may guide those who, in
teaching the subject, desire to keep before themselves definite
ends as the necessary basis of right methods.

Now a school subject, apart from its relation to the utilities
of life, may primarily be chosen for its aid in training intellec-
tual faculty, e.g. Geometry, or taste, e.g. Literature or Drawing.
But there are broader ends still which may be applied as tests
in the estimate of educational values. Perhaps we may say
that a subject makes its strongest claims to a place in a school
course, when it not only increases knowledge and exercises
mental faculty, but when it stimulates interest in larger views of
life and action, and provides the continuance of that interest
when the initiative of the teacher is withdrawn. History does
all this. It has the merit that applications of its lessons are
always ready to hand: unlike Chemistry, it needs no laboratory,
unlike Geometry, its interest is never merely technical. It

JO The Teaching of History in Schools — A ims.

shares with Literature and Philosophy the highest intellectual
and moral attractiveness, in dealing with subject-matter of
perennial concern to human life and motive.

It is necessary, next, to distinguish the elements of our
intellectual faculty with which History has chiefly to do. We
are all aware that our own earliest interest in History was
nothing but an unconscious extension of our interest in story-
telling. The most enduring historical acquisitions we have
made are those early stories of the Old Testament, of Greece,
Rome and England which came to each of us, originally, before
History as a subject concerned us at all. The reason why they
have thus survived lies in the fact that such stories appealed to
our imagination, satisfied it, and stimulated it to dwell with
pleasure on their repetition. This fitness of the story to the
childish mind depended, no doubt, partly on its Old World
simplicity, on its balance, perhaps on its striking literary form.
But the essential factor in the appeal of narrative to the young
is its quality of imaginative stimulus. History then begins by
being, and ought always on certain sides of it to continue to
be, an exercise of constructive imagination.

In the earliest stage of History teaching the aim is just
this : to arouse the class to realise in mental picture the action,
scene and character presented by the subject chosen: just as,
in a much later stage, the same capacity for realising the
emotions called into play by the great formative ideas of social
organisation is essential to comprehending their force. The
difference between a lesson that becomes knowledge, and one
that does not, lies partly, at any rate, in the vividness of
imagination which has been brought into activity in the course
of it. Nor may we expect, in the case of younger scholars,
that the learner will be able to bring this imaginative faculty
to bear, unless the teacher directly arouses it. The book will
not arouse it, such a book, I mean, as any class is able to use.
Hence we touch at once upon the primary function of the
History teacher in the elementary stages ; he must teach and

The Teaching of History in Schools — A ims. 7 1

not merely hear a lesson. The latter may conduce to exercise
of memory, but never of imagination. Voice, manner, fertility
of illustration, unconscious emphasis, instinctive knowledge of
the child's familiarity with action and with moral qualities, the
constant testing of the ground, the imaginative insight into the
subject dealt with — all these the teacher has and the book
cannot have: these make the teacher. Thus we notice that the
teacher's imagination forms the dominant factor here. Masters
are apt to say that they cannot teach History to very young
children : in that these have so little power of taking in facts
that are outside their experience. It is meant, to put it into
other words, that children have so little imagination. But the
true reason is that the Master has so little; and that, again,
means that he has not exercised it, and has not supplied it with
proper, and with sufficient, material. For a ready yet truthful
imagination demands fulness of material, much more than does
a mere memory. For we need to play with our subject, to feel
instinctively the analogies and the contrasts that it admits of,
so to be able to express it in rapidly sketched pictures, with
emphasis and proportion true to realities.

In preparing any lesson the teacher thus has more to do
than to make sure of the actual facts with which it deals. He
must seize the points which these may offer, or be made to offer,
for clear and precise word-pictures. In the youngest classes,
matter which does not readily lend itself to this treatment
should be at once avoided as unsuitable. Characters, whose
broad lines of good and bad qualities are easily recognisable,
incidents of romantic sort — material which we find more
frequently in the earlier stages of history — are naturally first
chosen. But we should notice that all 'good' qualities do
not appeal to the child : ascetic, contemplative, passive virtues
make little impression. The instinct of the child's moral
nature, as of his physical, is towards action. It is true that
imagination is aroused by contrasts with daily experience,
rather than by similarities, but this contrast must be sought in

"]2 The Teaching of History in Schools — A ims.

the surroundings and in the larger scale of the activity : not in
the selection of types of life and conduct which are outside the
range of a child's sympathies. The same is true of events.
Unfamiliarity is the surest means of rousing interest, but the
imagination will only be fruitfully exercised if the new matter is
brought home by being put into some relation with what is
already known. Without that, too great strain is placed upon
the constructive faculty, and like a clumsy description in a
book of travel the lesson fails to suggest any mental picture
at all.

The teacher's imagination, then, must be alert. It must, in
the next place, be restrained. The question arises in connec-
tion with stories avowedly unhistorical. We cannot possibly
eliminate them from teaching. But the imagination is not to
be let loose because we are no longer on the hard ground of
fact. The teacher must stick to the myth. In treating the
narrative of events the same restraint is needed, in omitting
pictures or images which are out of all useful relation to the
scholar's capacity. It is, for instance, of no avail to force
imaginative conceptions of abstract ideas: feudalism, empire,
autonomy, and the like.

Beginners are best relieved of any attempt to grasp socia
or political organisation. It is an utter mistake to 'start with
the concrete,' in the sense in which some writers on historical
method have advocated it. There is nothing which appeals
to the imagination in the 'policeman,' the 'juryman,' the
'magistrate,' or the 'mayor' (qua mayor); and to try to rise from
such 'concrete instances' to conceptions of 'Order,' 'Govern-
ment,' 'Law' and 'Kingship' is perfectly futile. A teacher may
in this manner get in a certain amount of useful information,
but it will prove uninteresting, and it is therefore premature.
The teacher, knowing the imaginative value to himself of these
outward emblems of national polity, may fancy that he can
stimulate his class to an equal interest. But he must re-
member that his imaginative faculty, with its wide resources of

Tlie Teaching of History in Schools — Aims. 73

fact, is no criterion of the strength of that of his scholars, and
that, to be a trustworthy guide, it must be kept in constant re-
straint during a lesson. In reality ideas are unsuited for teaching
purposes in case of the very young. 'The King' is abstract :
William I. is concrete: the first will fail as an exercise of
imagination, the other will succeed. 'Law' as an abstract
authority is unintelligible to children, who will however readily
understand the Forest Law of the Conqueror.

It will be asked at this point: "How far does this method
of teaching aim at laying the foundations of subsequent study
of the subject?" The reply is, that the truest preparation for
future progress does not consist in imparting a body of know-
ledge, which will save time at a later stage, but in inspiring
a taste, and in training the necessary intellectual faculty, for
further acquisition. The actual retention of a number of facts
and dates is, no doubt, usefully secured as early as possible.
But this is only a minor service, when done. It will be of far
greater importance to have stimulated interest in the historic
past, and to have developed a power of seeing its incidents in
clear-cut mental pictures.

The distinction between a logical and a psychological
method of treating a subject of instruction is not without special
helpfulness in considering methods of History teaching. Where
a subject lends itself to so much variety of approach, we may
fairly adopt the avenue which leads straight to the learner's
interest. The teacher then is not concerned with the logical
order of the material, but with its affinity to the child-mind.
At this stage relative importance of historical subject-matter for
teaching purposes is determined by the appeal it makes to the
child's imagination, not by intrinsic value.

In a broad sense Patriotism rests partly on carefully-
restrained appeals to imagination ; and I know of no reason
why this may not form a definite end of the teaching of History
almost from the beginning. The love of country and pride in
it may be allowed to precede the sense of duty to one's

74 Tlie Teaching of History in Schools — Aims.

country. Citizenship — one concrete side of Patriotism — is a
conception to be slowly won at a much later period. But the
germs of patriotic feeling must be planted by the agency of the
imaginative faculty, and indeed it can never be wholly inde-
pendent of it.

It will follow from what has been urged so far that the
most profitable material for the first stages of History teaching
will be found in primitive, rather than in modern, periods. In
its appeal to children, a childlike age of humanity is more
successful than its complex manhood. Hence the supreme
interest of the stories of the Old Testament, of early Greece
and Rome. The simplicity of ideas, the predominance of the
elementary moral qualities, the importance of the individual,
all render the pictures of early History intelligible to the young.
There are, of course, admirable instances in our own History.
But the old practice of teaching ancient story rather than
modern had its basis in sound educational theory.

The second chief function in the disciplinary use of History
is that of introducing the growing mind to reflection upon
cause and effect in human affairs : in other words, that of
training the reasoning faculty. It is one of the aims of teaching
in all subjects to substitute in the growing mind rational asso-
ciations of ideas for arbitrary ones. That William I. succeeded
Harold II. may be remembered by arbitrary association, if it is
a matter of mere verbal memory of names and dates : by
rational association, the actual fact is seen to be the result of
a number of antecedents which can be taught and grasped.
The importance to memory of such higher associations needs
not to be pointed out. This may help the Master to determine
the method of teaching facts and dates : if he can, let the
relation of cause and effect be first understood, then the se-
quence of events, being now necessary, is remembered without
effort.

The capacity for looking for, and estimating, the right
sequence of events can be trained from an early age : cruelty

The Teaching of History in Schools — Aims. 75

induces revenge, bad rule, rebellion. Naturally the power
comes into play when a fuller knowledge of facts has been
acquired. But the Master can help his class in marking out
the clear line of development in his subject and in freeing the
main thread of causation from episodes and side issues; obscure
and unrelated connections will be discarded, and the class
taught to follow out the successive links in the chain. The
break up of the Athenian Empire or the revolt of the American
Colonies afford obvious examples of matter suitable for the
specific teaching of cause and effect in affairs. Moral causation
will not less easily be inculcated. The rigid self-discipline of
the Spartan State and its consequences in the place of Lace-
daemon in Greece, contrasted with the degeneracy of the
Persian monarchy and its collapse. So too the story of
Ethelred, or of Richard II., or of France in the 18th century
exhibit instances of the effects of moral decline.

The comparative method, which I would advocate even
from the beginning, will enable a teacher to enforce these
lessons by reference to analogies drawn from other histories.
The Jews, the Greeks, the Romans and the English are avail-
able for the purpose. The influence of character in causa-
tion ; the inevitable march of revolution ; the forces working
for national decline ; the effects of geography on national life,
of commerce upon empire — every one of these central pheno-
mena of History can only be securely taught when reasoning
from one country to another is guided and filled out by the
teacher. This is in no sense digression : it is utilising History
as the finest instrument for reasoning upon human action.

There is another aspect in which the reasoning faculty of a
class may be stimulated and exercised by the judicious History
Master. I am referring to the mental discipline afforded by
the critical method : the estimate of the value of historical
evidence. This involves reasoning on the general probability
of facts as recorded, and on the available knowledge or pre-
sumable bias on the part of the historian.

y6 The TeacJdng of History in Schools — Aims.

To illustrate how far from difficult such an introduction to
criticism in reality is, it may be worth while to instance an
example which the writer has known to be worked out with
a class of boys of 16 years old : Shakespeare's Henry VI., in
relation to the life of Richard, Duke of Gloucester. It forms
an easy and very effective study in the laws of historical credi-
bility. The examination turns on (a) probability of facts,
(b) bias of narrator ; the entire apparatus of criticism lies in
small compass and is easily accessible.

In the same way the value of the evidence of Herodotus or
of Livy ; the allowance to be made for bias in Tacitus, in
a modern American historian, or Mr Carlyle : all this is in
upper Forms perfectly appropriate material for the training of
the reasoning faculty. It is not of least importance that such
critical enquiry introduces the young scholar to the habit — as
difficult as it is valuable — of handling books with freedom and
self-reliance.

The third element of intellectual capacity which History
brings into exercise is that of Judgment. The word is used
rather loosely, but it is one for which we cannot well find
a substitute. By ' practical judgment ' I mean the faculty of
estimating action (i) as regards the adjustment of means to
ends, and (2) as regards its Tightness in the moral sphere. The
first is insight into the action of a man, or of a body of men, or
of the State as a whole, judging it in respect of its wisdom,
skill, genius, as manifested in the choice and pursuit of certain
ends. The second is the moral estimate of this action : or, as
we usually speak of it under this aspect, Conduct.

This quality of practical judgment here indicated is one
which History pre-eminently cultivates. The great English
masters of history, Arnold, Stubbs, Gardiner, have insisted on
the virtue which goes forth from the earnest study of their
subject in respect of the development of this capacity.

History is the record of the action of men, guiding, and
guided by, the operation of ideas more or less imperfectly

The Teachifig of History in Schools — Aims. yy

grasped. But civilised men and States are always aiming at
some object, which they have set before themselves, worthy or
unworthy, avowed or secret. The study of History teaches us
to disentangle these aims, to discern how they came to be
sought and what means were devised to attain them. Now, as
all life, individual or corporate, is the exhibition of this same
effort at devising aims and at adjusting means to securing them,
we are, in historical enquiry, on familiar ground. It is not here
suggested that historical study serves peculiarly as training in
judgment in the private or individual capacities of life. But
the citizenship of a self-governing State demands the constant
exercise of that judgment which History can best inform and
enlighten. For by it we consider the action of individuals —
their skill, motives and ends ; by it we estimate the ideals and
the policy of nations. The career of Pericles, of Caesar, of
Charlemagne, wisely taught, will form admirable training in
political judgment ; and, though the problem is more complex,
so will the imperial policy of Athens, of Spain, or of England.
Let it be understood that the work of the Master is not to
frame and impart conclusions of his own, but to lead his class
to distinguish such factors as are of crucial weight, and to
estimate the limits within which judgments may be reasonably
formed. The History lesson, then, is not only a series of
mental pictures, not only a reasoned ordering of causes and
results, but an attempt to view men and policies as complete
wholes, with a view to a tentative verdict upon the skill and
the moral sincerity which they exhibit. It is sometimes
necessary, in such teaching, to discern between a man and his
cause, to judge so carefully that our verdist is in favour of the
one, but against the other: approving Demosthenes, but doubt-
ful of his policy ; distrustful of Charles, but cherishing much
that was unluckily identified with him.

History read in this spirit may, as nothing else can, help to
correct some inevitable tendencies of maturer youth: such as the
habit of forming hard, uncompromising opinions. Judgment will

7 8 The Teaching of History in Schools — Aims.

imply charity and caution in riding pre-conceptions too hard.
It will teach us to see something of the intangible forces that
overrule personal preferences and hinder the direct application
of principles sincerely held. The teacher will point out how
good men, if weak, may do greater harm than worse men who
are strong; how bad motives may somehow end in results
which are for the welfare of the many. From him should pro-
ceed the lesson that sweeping denunciations and wide moral
generalisations are often false, and may merely cover up
indolence in the search for truth, or the partiality of sectarian
zeal. On such judgment as this, fortified by resources of clearly-
reasoned facts, the true patriotic emotion may be based. To
teach Citizenship as Herbert Spencer would have us do, turning
our history lessons into descriptive sociology, will, we may con-
fidently assume, prove a dismal failure. The way to the higher
sense of patriotic duty does not lie through the enumeration
and analysis of the specific forms which the duties of citizen-
ship may take in actual life. Patriotism is a double obligation,
a local and an imperial duty, and the stimulus to it must be
first sought in the nobler emotions which revolve round
inherited responsibilities.

Throughout the school course in History, these would seem
to be the special ends to be kept in view by a Master who
desires to make of his subject a truly effective factor in intel-
lectual development : the stimulation and exercise of imagina-
tion, reasoning, judgment, and the patriotic sense.

THE TEACHING OF HISTORY IN
SCHOOLS— PRACTICE.

History has obtained in English Schools within recent
years a new importance. It no longer ranks amongst the
voluntary 'extras' in the School curriculum. More time is
given to its study ; it is recognised as having other functions
in Education besides that of stocking the memory with useful
information, and many Schools possess at least one Master
who has had some Historical training at the University.

Its place in Education however, though reconsidered, is
not yet settled. At present there is no unanimity amongst the
Theorists or the Teachers. There is no agreement as to what
the aims in the teaching of History should be, or as to what
History in Schools can or cannot do. Divergence of aim is
partly responsible for the differences in the time allotted to
History (varying from f of an hour a week in some Schools to
five hours in the Modern and three in the Classical side at
others), and also for the astonishing diversity in the methods
employed in the Teaching. Every School is a law unto itself;
and in most Schools every master may teach History in the
way which seems to him to be best — or easiest. Such inde-
pendence and variety has its advantages, and is consistent with
the principles of English education. But as a consequence it
is impossible for a writer on the Teaching of History to detail
English methods as he would those of the Germans. The

80 The Teaching of History in Schools — Practice.

present writer therefore does not propose to give a complete
account of History Teaching in Schools — that at present is
impossible — nor to draw up elaborate schemes or dictate
Methods. All he can do is to note deficiencies, to point
out difficulties which he himself has met with, and to make
suggestions as a result of his own experience and the ex-
perience of others.

First of all something must be said with regard to the general
organization of History Teaching.

A contrast might easily be drawn between the completeness
of the German system and the incomplete arrangements of
most English Schools. At present, however, the German
system cannot be naturalised in England. At most, if not
all, Schools the time allotted to History is insufficient; in
some it is too absurdly inadequate to permit even important
periods to be covered twice, which is one characteristic of
the German system. Moreover, the lack of trained teachers
makes the study of General History with the same elaborate-
ness as in Germany quite impossible, and attempts made are
apt to lead to a boy being crammed with masses of uncon-
nected facts and names, or to an unintelligent reading of
some universal History. And things being as they are, the
present writer is not at all sure that in the higher forms,
if a choice, from lack of time, has to be made, a detailed
knowledge of one Period is not more valuable than a very
slight acquaintance with a good many.

But if under existing circumstances a big measure of reform
is impossible, many amendments may at least be carried out.
In some schools History is made subservient to Classics,
and only Ancient History is taught in the top divisions; at
others Ancient History is ignored in the Sixth Form. In some
schools long and important Periods are left untouched : of
nearly all it would be true to say that their teaching of Modern
History is too insular, and ignores foreign countries. As a
consequence, some boys do not possess even an acquaintance

The Teaching of History in Schools — Practice. 8 1

in dates with the Period which witnessed the decline of the
Roman Empire ; and yet this is the Period which the greatest
of English historians has made his own. Other boys are
without any adequate or connected knowledge of the History
of their own country, or of its Empire. Again, nearly all
boys are extraordinarily ignorant of Foreign History; and
that ignorance results in narrowness of view, and in an insular
contempt of other nations which familiarity with their History
would alone dispel.

But it is easy to point out deficiencies ; it is a harder task
to suggest remedies. Something may be done by a rearrange-
ment of the Periods studied ; something to remedy gross
ignorance by a book of dates ; History must cease to be
regarded as the handmaid of Classics ; most important of all,
more time must be given to History, and more teachers.

So much may be said as to organisation ; and now some
suggestions may be made as to the use of what may be termed
the instruments in History Teaching — the Text-books, Illus-
trations, Atlases. On one point teachers are agreed ; Text-
books, except in teaching very small boys, are indispensable.
The necessary facts — the Grammar — of History must be learnt
by reading and not by hearing ; it is the business of the book
to narrate, of the teacher to illustrate, explain, supplement.
For English and for Ancient History there is an ever-increasing
supply of Text-books for both small and big boys. For
European History, it is harder to find suitable Text-books ;
Freeman's General Sketch gives the elementary facts for young
boys, and for more advanced students there are such books as
Lodge's Modern Europe, the Periods of European History
published by Messrs Rivington, and Macmillan's Foreign
Statesmen Series. But good intermediate Text-books are
still needed, though Longmans' Epoch Series is useful for
special periods.

In some schools, the younger boys are still the victims of
abridgements; and we are not yet free from the traditional

A. 6

82 The Teaching of History in Schools — Practice.

methods of those who abridge with the result that History, as
a French writer has put it, appears as a series of wars, treaties,
reforms, revolutions, differing only in the names of the peoples,
sovereigns, fields of battle, and in the figures giving the year.

To come to another subject — the part that illustrations
should play in the Teaching of History. It is being more
and more recognised that in education boys should learn, not
only by reading and hearing, but also by observation. And in
History especially a great deal can be taught by sight. The
younger boys will receive a more definite, clear, and lasting
impression from what they see, than either from what they read
or from what they hear; with all boys illustrations will make
History more real, and consequently more interesting ; and
illustrations are not without their value in stimulating the
imagination, and in making more keen the boy's power of
observation.

Moreover, of recent years a great deal has been done to
supply illustrations. Some Text-books are filled with admirably
chosen ones. Photographs of buildings, coins, engravings,
can be had in plenty. Photographs of portraits are easily
procurable, and though boys cannot judge character from
them, yet a good portrait will enable them to realise that
historical personages were real flesh and blood, and not remote
beings ticketed with dates. The Germans, again, have pub-
lished a collection of coloured pictures, in which striking events
in History are reproduced with the most scrupulous fidelity.
There is no difficulty in getting or making lantern-slides ; some
firms have very complete and elaborate collections; and the
present writer has found no difficulty in getting leave from
publishers to make slides from pictures in books. The lantern
can best illustrate campaigns, whether ancient or modern, on
sea or on land, whether they be those of Hannibal or Nelson.
By its means the social life of a past epoch can most easily be
realised. A series of pictures of the Roman Wall for instance
will give a boy some notion of the greatness of the Roman

The Teaching of History in Schools — Practice. 83

Empire, and form an admirable introduction to its history.
Slides showing Pompeii (as it was and as it is), Pompeian shops,
the games of the circus, displays in the amphitheatre as illustrated
by frescoes, reliefs, and coins, will give a boy some conception of
its social life. To take but one other example of a different
kind. The British Museum authorities have just published a
most interesting and well-chosen series of facsimiles of letters
at a very moderate price. Some fiery notes of Henry VIII.
written in the margin of a document of Latimer's, and con-
temning his attack upon Purgatory, a page from Edward VI. 's
diary about the conversion of his sister Mary, a letter of Mary
Stuart to Elizabeth complaining of the rigour of her imprison-
ment, a document signed by the English commanders after the
defeat of the Armada, declaring that they would follow and
pursue the enemy until they had left our shores, a page from
the log of Ralegh's ship on his last voyage, it is such letters as
these that excite in a boy that personal interest in historical
characters without which History loses for the young its reality
and its charm. Moreover it is by examining such letters that
a boy may make his first approach to original documents, and
learn that it is from thousands of manuscripts such as these
that the historian must largely form his judgment of the men
and events of a past age1.

An Atlas of Historical Geography is of course an indis-
pensable instrument in the teaching of History; indeed its
necessity is so obvious, and by this time so generally

1 The Art for Schools Association, Messrs Mansell & Co. of Oxford
Street, and Messrs Spooner of the Strand have very large collections of
photographs of buildings, pictures, portraits ; Messrs Newton & Co. and
Messrs Philip & Son, both of Fleet Street, have varied series of lantern-
slides, including slides from such books as the illustrated edition of Green's
Short History, and Gardiner's Students' History; specimens of some of the
illustrations used abroad may be seen in the Museum of the Teachers' Guild
of Gower Street, W.C. Schreiber's Atlas of Classical Antiquities for
Ancient History, and Lavisse's Album Historique (4 volumes— Colin et
Cie.) for Mediaeval and Modern History are excellent.

6—2

84 The Teaching of History in Schools — Practice.

recognised, that it is superfluous to prove it. For English
History, Gardiner's Atlas is excellent and quite adequate for
most boys, and it does not neglect foreign countries ; but
there is room for another which should contain more details
and more Maps. In European History, there is the Oxford
Historical Atlas, now in course of publication, which I have
found most useful in teaching older boys. For Ancient
History, Murray's new series of Maps is quite admirable.
Teachers will, of course, find the elaborately detailed maps
published in Germany most useful for themselves.

Something must now be said of the methods of teaching.
Foreigners tell us that in education, as in all else, we have no
care for method. We certainly have not been drilled into
the rigid and possibly mechanical system prescribed for the
Continental Teacher. We are in favour of liberty and inde-
pendence in teaching, and consequently there is every variety
of method, both good and bad. That variety, even if it is
undesirable, is unavoidable. The methods employed in teach-
ing must largely depend upon the time allotted to History,
and upon the knowledge, the character, and the experience of
the particular teacher.

In treating of method, it is necessary to make some division
of the boys according to their ages. Of teaching in the pre-
paratory stages — before a boy comes to a Public School — the
present writer, having no practical experience, proposes to say
nothing.

With regard to Public Schools, boys in the Lower Forms
must learn the main facts in the chief periods, and provided
that the dates are supplied in reasonable quantities a boy from
13 to 15 has no very special horror of them; he prefers the
facts to be put in a concise and definite form ; and he can learn
them with less difficulty then than at any later period of his
existence. For the learning of dates the writer has no new
suggestion ; some teachers exercise their ingenuity in making
rhymes and puzzles, and provided that they are not so ingenious

The Teaching of History in Schools — Practice. 85

as to confuse, and yet ingenious enough to please the boys, they
may be of use. For the supply of dates some have suggested
a short book of a few pages, containing the chief dates, names
and facts of History to be learnt like a Grammar, and to be in
use throughout a school. Others — and probably this is better —
have a more graduated list, containing a list of dates for the
younger boys: for those higher up the original dates in big
type, supplemented by others in smaller type; for those at the
top a still larger list. Even an acquaintance merely in dates
with great events and great men is better than complete
ignorance. Boys when they are young should also possess
some time-chart of the World's History to enable them to
measure the periods of time covered, the comparative length of
Ancient, Mediaeval and Modern History, and to realise even
vaguely the "Unity of History." The History of each country
or people in teaching the younger boys must be treated
separately, and isolated; but as a consequence boys fail, for
instance, to connect in time the History of Greece and Rome,
or events in English History with great events abroad. They
altogether fail to appreciate the length of the early periods in
the world's history1.

In the actual teaching, most would agree that the periods
with boys in the Lower Forms should be done quickly, the
great object being to cover the chief epochs in outline ; that
the ordinary teaching must consist in explaining and supple-
menting the text-book ; that viva voce questions should be
asked, if not so systematically as in Germany, at all
events with great frequency and with some method. With
regard to written questions, a number of short questions on
the text-book involving written answers of three or four lines
may help a boy to read a book intelligently, and shorter

1 A recent writer has suggested a 'line of time' which each boy can
make for himself, the scale being two inches to 500 years, and the periods,
events, and dates can be filled in at discretion. It will please a boy's
ingenuity to make such a line and to place a date 'in scale' accurately.

86 The Teaching of History in Schools — Practice.

questions with almost monosyllabic answers may teach him
accuracy. The American 'recitation' might be of great value in
teaching a boy not only History, but also how to connect his
ideas and give a clear narrative when he is standing on his legs.
A great deal may be done by black-board illustration1.

At the same time it must be remembered that boys at
that age are learning grammar in Latin, Greek, French ; their
History should stimulate and interest as well as inform. It
does not interest lower boys to show how the control of the
purse-strings affected the power of the House of Commons,
or to follow closely the relations between the Stuarts and their
Parliaments. But they are keenly interested in fighting, they
like to know how battles were lost and won, they love to
make maps and plans. They are hero-worshippers and like
biography. Lectures should be given occasionally dealing in
detail with particular wars or biographies. A life of Hannibal
if they are doing Roman History, of Ralegh if they are studying
Elizabeth's reign, the history of the long bow and its victories
for the earlier wars with France, of the three-decker for the
later wars, will be a refreshing break from lists of dates and
kings, wars and treaties, and will teach them as much history.

In the higher forms of schools (including roughly boys
from 16 to 19) the teaching of History changes its character.
It is in these forms that boys learn that History is not a fortui-
tous concourse of facts and events but must be studied in
connexion with cause and effect, and that they must use their
reasoning powers as well as their memory in order to understand
it. From this time the oral teaching becomes of more importance
than the text-book. After all the best of text-books will by
itself teach but little History. A boy might know his text-book
by heart, and yet have but a small acquaintance with the
period which the book is supposed to cover. It is the teacher —
before a boy can read much for himself — who must generalise

1 Mr Somervell has given some ingenious examples of this method of
teaching in a book called Teaching and Organisation.

The Teaching of History in Schools — Practice. 87

from and analyse facts ; who must give his judgment on men
and events ; who must explain causes and estimate effects ;
and who must stimulate and give the real guidance. The oral
teaching should now begin to take the form of a lecture ; the
text-book need not be followed, and the History should be
taught by subjects.

The boy must learn how to take notes on Lectures. In
beginning a boy is apt to put down the unessential or to leave
out what is necessary ; a virtuous boy is apt to measure his
virtue by the number of pages covered, and to spread over
10 pages what he might easily have compressed into 3; if he is
very virtuous he may follow the example of the Cambridge
young lady in whose note-book appeared the opening words of
the lecturer, "Last time I began by saying." But a boy soon
learns to have an eye for the chief points, will not waste words,
will use abbreviations, will not forget quotations or illustrations,
and will know what to neglect. In lecturing on English
History to large classes at the top of the school, the present
writer has found it a great advantage to prepare a printed
Syllabus for circulation amongst the boys which contains the
outline of the Lecture and the chief facts, tables of dates and
genealogies, quotations from contemporary writers and from
modern historians, short lists of books, and blank pages for
the boy to take notes. Such a syllabus saves the Lecturer
much dictation and the boys much mechanical note-taking,
and is of service for reference, whilst the boys appreciate the
quotations, and the blank pages enable them to take notes
quickly without the necessity of a note-book1.

Though, however, the teaching should be mainly by lectur-
ing it should not be wholly so. Viva voce questions must be
asked continually, to see whether the boys have understood,
remembered, attended, and in order that they may themselves
suggest where possible the causes or results of a particular

1 Copies of these Syllabuses may be obtained from Messrs Spottiswoode
and Co., Eton College.

88 The Teaching of History in Schools — Practice.

event or policy ; and even the dignity of a Sixth Form boy may
be occasionally startled by a question of a very elementary or
very recondite nature. Numerous explanations, digressions,
illustrations may prevent note-taking becoming mechanical ;
and more especially the boy should write answers to questions.

It is now, if not before, that the questions set not only test
a boy's knowledge but his ability, not only his facts and dates
but his capacity to use them, argue from them, interpret them.
It is extraordinary how difficult some boys at first find it to
answer questions which demand the use of their reason as well
as their memory. They will for instance give a good account
of the Civil War with many details ; but any question which
involves the use and not a mere statement of the facts makes
them helpless. They can, as they express it, "write out" a
reign or a life, but any question asking what claims a man has
to be considered a great Statesman or a great General will
produce either great quantities of fluent nonsense or an alarm-
ing mass of very solid narrative. A boy should be able to
write an answer in a limited time in which facts should be used
to illustrate points or support arguments, which should keep to
the question and be well arranged, and which should be withal
forcibly and brightly expressed. That is the ideal ; it would
be absurd of course to say that all or even most boys attain to
it. Some boys cannot pick out easily what they want from a
heap of material ; others find it difficult to keep to the point,
and will sometimes write an answer which has but a remote
connexion with the question, or will fly off at a tangent half-
way through the answer. Some will use slang when they try
to be forcible, and scatter epithets with no discretion when
they wish to write well ; the answers of others never succeed in
escaping the charge of dulness. But all boys will improve with
practice, and this practice affords a most valuable training.

One or two other points may be noticed. Boys in the
higher forms might do historical essays, and for these they
should be encouraged to read larger books, the subjects of

The Teaching of History in Schools — Practice. 89

course being selected with a view to interest, and so set as to
allow of some originality of treatment. Moreover they should
be introduced to the works of the great historians; in the
middle forms this can best be done by reading out passages —
a scene from Froude, a description from Macaulay, a chapter
of some biography will give boys a prospect of the future de-
lights of History ; in the higher forms the boys should be
urged to read for themselves. Some attempt ought to be
made to take in detail some Period either in Ancient or English
History, tracing not only its political but also the economic,
constitutional, social and literary History. The Oxford and
Cambridge Certificate Examination requires a Period to be
thus studied. For at least one term in the year European
History should be studied, and clever boys take to Political
Science without any difficulty.

It is easy enough, however, to make suggestions; it is
impossible to adopt them unless more time is devoted in most
schools to History, and, what is equally important, allowed to
the teacher for preparation. In the sixth form for instance of
most public schools where from one to one and a half hours in a
week is devoted to History, it is difficult to find time to do more
than ask short questions from the text-book, to Lecture and set
very occasionally a paper ; moreover if the boys are specialists
in classics they have little opportunity for historical reading,
and no time to do essays. At some schools the difficulty of
time is partly solved in the higher forms by making History an
optional subject amongst many others, one of which must be
taken, and boys who are interested in History can choose it
as their subject.

Finally something may be said of the Specialists, of boys,
who though they may not have given up classics are reading
for scholarships, or have settled to read History at the Univer-
sities, and so in their last year make History their first subject.
With the latter class, the teacher has a free hand ; he is not
limited by examinations, and his only object is to teach them to

go The Teaching- of History in Schools — Practice.

read history intelligently and to give them a solid foundation to
build upon later. An attempt may be made to give these
boys a clear outline of English History and if possible of
some foreign period ; they should read " general " books, the
works of such writers as Bagehot, Dicey, Seeley, Maine ; they
should also write more elaborate essays than the ordinary boy
has time to do ; and above all, they should be carefully taught
the proper methods of Historical study, so that they may not —
as so many do — lose time when they reach the University.
But a promising boy, at that age, if too young to form
judgments, will at any rate possess prejudices. He will take
interest in, and show enthusiasm for, particular periods or
particular men. He should be encouraged to read as much
and as deeply as possible on a subject which interests him,
and may be introduced to the original authorities. Happy
indeed is the teacher who has many such boys. There can be
no more delightful task than stimulating and directing the
enthusiasm of a youthful historian.

A word may be said in conclusion as to History Scholar-
ships. It is well to remember that the Examinations at Oxford
and Cambridge differ in their demands, and that the character
and interests of a boy must largely determine for which Uni-
versity he should be a candidate. Cambridge examinations
demand a wide knowledge ; at one college there are papers on
the World's history, on the whole of English History, on the
History of Political Government, and on a foreign period, and
in each paper eight out of the twelve questions have to be
answered. The questions present no great difficulty if the
facts are familiar. At Oxford on the other hand it is better to
possess a detailed knowledge of one period than a superficial
acquaintance with a great many; only five or six out of twelve
questions need be answered, but they necessitate more than
a text-book acquaintance with a subject ; great stress is laid on
the general papers in which questions are set on all subjects,
from Art to Political Economy, and on the essay ; and a boy

The Teaching of History in Schools — Practice. 91

may be helped materially by his classics. 'Spes non res' is the
Oxford motto, and the answers are judged, perhaps in a
greater degree than at Cambridge, not only by the knowledge
displayed, but by their arrangement and arguments, their style
and attractiveness.

But the number of pages allotted to this Chapter is already
exceeded. The claims of History are still matter of debate,
but the present writer has no doubt that History will fill a
larger place in education in the future than it does now. For
History in schools may not only provide boys with information
" which is part of the apparatus of a cultivated life," but should
do something to stimulate the imagination of the young, to
develop the reason of those who are older, possibly to train the
judgment of a few in the Highest Forms. It may extend the
mental horizon of all. It may and should provoke patriotism
and enthusiasm; it should help to train the Citizen or the
Statesman ; its study should lead to right feeling and to right
thinking. Yet a teacher who has all or some of these aims
will frequently be dissatisfied with himself and his methods,
and will be conscious more often of failure than of success.
But that is the lot of all who teach. Some satisfaction may
be obtained if one succeeds in preparing a boy to read History
for himself and to appreciate its lessons in after-life.

THE TEACHING OF HISTORY
IN AMERICA.

To give anything like a complete account of the historical
teaching in American universities would be an exceedingly
difficult, if not impossible, undertaking. For the individualism
which characterises the political and economic life of the
United States marks also their educational activity; and it has
produced a bewildering congeries of institutions, all exercising
the power of conferring academic degrees, but exhibiting in
their standards an incomparably wider diversity than can be
found in any of the countries of Europe. It is true that some
even of the smallest of these institutions are doing excellent
work. They often provide opportunities for a higher culture to
"constituencies" which, from want of means, inadequate pre-
vious education or religious prejudice, would be kept away
from the greater universities. In judging of them it is not
always possible to separate provincial ignorance from local
patriotism or sectarian jealousy from self-denying zeal. Still this
state of things makes it peculiarly hard to generalize. "Courses
of instruction," which on paper look very much alike, may in
actual practice be separated by the whole gamut of possible
difference, — at the one end a quite Teutonic Griindlichkeit, at
the other the unintelligent reproduction of ill-chosen text-books.
And, if one surveys the whole field of American education, these
standards will be found to shade into one another by in-
sensible gradations. This helps to explain what at first seems so

The Teaching of History in America. 93

curious to the European scholar who joins the staff of a famous
American university: the absence of sharp lines of demar-
cation, and the kindly tolerance which his colleagues display
towards institutions which he is inclined to dismiss with con-
tempt. Their attitude has this further justification, that the
tendency is now quite distinctly in the direction of improve-
ment all round. Every year more and more of those men,
who after graduating at a small institution have benefited by a
period of further study at one of the greater centres of learning,
are returning to teach in their old colleges with new scientific
aspirations and new criteria of excellence. The process of
levelling-up has grave obstacles to overcome, but it is making
way.

The other difficulty in the way of generalisation is the
remarkable variety in the forms of academic organisation to be
found even among institutions of the first rank. The foreign
observer is not only perplexed by such differences of custom
and nomenclature as inevitably grow up in course of time, such
for instance as may be found between Oxford and Cambridge;
he is struck by the juxtaposition of terms which seem to
belong to different national systems, — by the way, for instance,
in which "freshmen" and "bachelors" and "marks" jostle
against "Ph. D's" and "Seminaries," and even "Semesters" and
"Docents." The clue to the maze is furnished by American
college history. All the older American universities were
originally colleges of the English type. I imagine that a traveller
last century would have found little noticeable difference be-
tween the studies and modes of life in Emmanuel College,
Cambridge, and in her great daughter, Harvard College, in
Massachusetts. But when, soon after the great war was over
in 1815, America was visited by the stirrings of new intellectual
interests, it was to Germany that her young scholars all turned
for instruction and inspiration. They went to Gottingen and
Heidelberg, and returned with German conceptions of what
a "University" should mean. The result was an attempt, in

94 The Teaching of History in America.

more than one instance, to place on top of the old-fashioned
college of English type, a professorial university of the German
pattern. The movement was perhaps premature at the time ;
but it was revived and carried much further when the second
great wave of enthusiasm for the higher learning broke over
America in the years that immediately followed 1870. And
now the matter of university organisation is no longer a sub-
ject chiefly of theoretic interest to a few isolated scholars.
The development of the country in population, wealth, social
complexity and intellectual needs has brought "the faculty" of
every considerable institution face to face with the two funda-
mental problems of academic policy. These are, in the first
place, how to construct a curriculum for the ordinary student
which shall combine scope for individual powers, and regard
for the needs of the modern world with the claims of literary
culture; and, secondly, how to reconcile the business of
instruction in what is already known with the salutary impulse
towards further investigation. Thanks partly to the mechani-
cal genius of the American people, which makes all questions
of method so exceedingly — one is sometimes inclined to think,
excessively-*- interesting to them, these two problems are now
being confronted with a pretty clear consciousness of their
importance and of their interconnection. Ultimately, no doubt,
a definite type of American university will be arrived at,
appropriate to a modern industrial society. Meanwhile, the
American college is in the experimental stage ; and no one set
of requirements for degrees, no one line of demarcation between
"university" and "college," or between graduate and under-
graduate studies, can be regarded as more obviously likely to
prevail than any other of the half-dozen other experiments
which are being tried elsewhere.

In spite of all these diversities, however, there are still a
certain number of the larger features of academic life which are
common to all the greater universities ; and these I shall now
attempt to set forth. I shall naturally enough have Harvard

The Teaching of History in America. 95

mainly in my mind as I go along ; but although that oldest of
American colleges has some marked peculiarities of its own,
a word of caution here and there may suffice to prevent any
serious misapprehension.

The most striking feature in the educational system of the
American university is, I am inclined to think, the prominence
of the "course." A "course" consists, in most places, of two
or three hours of instruction per week, given most commonly
by means of lectures, and running right through the academic
year, together with prescribed reading and mid-year and final
yearly examinations upon both reading and lectures. The
same amount of work extending over only half the year, —
the academic year is commonly divided into halves, — con-
stitutes a "half-course"; and the like designation is sometimes
given to half the amount of work spread over the whole year.
In Harvard the student has an almost complete "freedom of
election" among the hundreds of courses offered to him; and
he receives his bachelor's degree on passing in a fixed number
of courses ; so that it is theoretically possible for him to make
the most incongruous combinations. But the inevitable limita-
tions of the time-table impose some restrictions ; and, besides,
undergraduates are very gregarious. The association for ad-
ministrative purposes of the teachers of cognate subjects in
"Divisions" and "Departments" {e.g. the Division of History
and Political Science, which includes the Departments of
History and Political Economy), would of itself suggest to the
undergraduate that certain subjects are akin. There tends, there-
fore, to grow up a certain loose grouping of the students around
the subjects which mainly attract their attention ; approaching,
though at a great distance, to the state of affairs produced at
Oxford and Cambridge by the Schools and Triposes. At most
other American universities there is far less freedom of selection
among individual courses : the student has either to choose be-
tween a certain number of combinations of subjects, and with each
subject take certain allotted courses, or, in very old-fashioned

96 The Teaching of History in America.

places, he pursues a common curriculum, with more or less
recognition of the method of alternatives. But however large
or small "the elective element" may be, the "course" is coming
to be the real unit of work and examination. For the bachelor's
degree there is nowhere, so far as I know, any examination
covering the whole of a couple of years' work, like those for
the Oxford Honour Schools or the Cambridge Triposes. It is
the universal practice for the "instructor" "giving" a "course"
himself to conduct the examination or examinations attached
to it ; this is, perhaps, inevitable with so wide a range of
" electives." When the number in a class is large, the instruc-
tor is commonly enabled to appoint one or more assistants to
help him with the reading of the papers; but there is no official
position comparable to that of an "examiner" in an English
university. The degree is conferred on the basis of the annual
"returns" which the instructors give in to the university "office."
Owing to the absence of outside examiners, and of any binding
definition of what a course shall include, and also to the power
of an instructor to modify his course year by year, the exami-
nation is not so much on a subject at large as upon the
particular course in the way in which it was conducted in a
particular year. However naturally some topic fell within the
scope of a course, a student would usually feel aggrieved if he
were asked some question upon it which had not been dealt
with by the lectures or by "reading" definitely recommended.
What has been said of the prominence of the "course" will
already have suggested the absence of any such tutorial system
as has been elaborated at Oxford or as is beginning to make
its appearance at Cambridge. There is no officer whose duty
it is to supervise the whole of a student's work for a couple of
years ; to so guide his reading and assign such topics for weekly
essays that he shall cover the whole of a certain large field
(comparable in amount, perhaps, to eight courses) within the
allotted time; and to hear and criticise these essays week by
week both as to form and content. In an American University

The Teaching of History in America. 97

the student is left much more to himself, both for good and
for ill. The instructors are very ready to advise him as to the
selection of courses; in some universities there are official
"advisers" for freshmen. Moreover there is a certain amount
of supervision and individual help provided in connection with
the several courses. In large elementary classes, numbering a
couple of hundred students or more, it is usual to introduce
frequent "tests," in the shape of "hour examinations," and to
employ the services of a staff of "assistants" who hold "confer-
ences," with such students as do badly on such occasions. It
is the business of these assistants to assign definite bits of
reading, and to see that the tasks are accomplished, after a
fashion. In the case of the smaller classes, the instructor may
confine himself to set lectures, and be content with the mid-
year and final annual examinations as tests of application and
intelligence. Or he may, and often does, assign pieces of
"written work," commonly called "theses," — perhaps as many
as four in the course of the year, to each man. The quality of
the performance, the amount of help given by the instructor,
the thoroughness of the criticism, the extent of personal
contact, differ with the nature of the course and the views
and idiosyncrasies of the teacher. Speaking broadly, it may
perhaps be said that the more intelligent and industrious
students get about as much personal assistance, putting it all
together, as they would in Oxford, while the lazy and stupid
get a good deal less. The average American professor, it will
be perceived, occupies a position midway between that of a
German professor and that of an Oxford tutor. He sees more
of the students than the former, less than the latter. But what-
ever help he may extend to his students, it is almost all in
connection with the particular courses he is "giving" that year.
Of course I am now speaking of official duty, and not of the
offices of friendship.

The "course," conducted chiefly by way of lectures, being
thus the pivot around which revolves the whole academic
A. 7

98 TJie Teaching of History in America.

world, the character of the instruction it provides is of vital
importance. Naturally this varies with the subject. In the
elementary historical courses all that can be expected, or
needed, is that the instructor should put before his hearers the
salient points in the period, and should direct their attention
to the "standard" writers who have dealt with it. But a very
noticeable feature in almost all the instruction above the most
elementary is the stress laid on the use of the original "sources."
This is not limited to the seminary work, to be described later :
in many of the ordinary courses the instructors insist that
students shall actually themselves consult some of the accessible
printed collections of documents or contemporary narrative.
From the universities the enthusiasm for "sources" is now
spreading to the teachers of American and English History in
the secondary schools; and I am not sure that "the new
method" is not in danger of being pushed to extremes. To
put before a student a bit of contemporary narrative, with all its
obvious bias and the unmistakeable colour of its time and place,
and thus enable him, as it were, to watch history in the making,
may give a new interest to the subject, and possibly awaken in
a mind here and there the germs of a critical sense. But as
soon as "source books" have come to be produced, with the
"portions" of contemporaries served up ready for immediate
consumption, it has to be very good teaching indeed which
induces the student to go further and look at the passages in
their context. No one who is acquainted with the Oxford
History School will maintain that the use of the "Select Char-
ters" has been an unmixed good. Still, whatever dangers may
lurk in "source books" for the klite of the students, they
evidently supply the average man with a valuable supplement
to the mere text-book.

The courses, it need hardly be said, range over the whole
field of history. My impression is that both Ancient History and
General Mediaeval History attract relatively few students, and
are represented by a relatively small number of teachers. But

The Teaching of History in America. 99

Mediaeval English History secures a surprisingly large amount
of attention on its constitutional side. The continuity of
English and American institutional development is taken for
granted ; and the great treatise of the Bishop of Oxford, sup-
plemented by the writings of Professor Maitland and Mr Round,
finds assiduous readers. Among courses on Modern History,
those on America naturally attract most auditors. Their place
in University life may be gathered from the following figures.
In the year 1897-8 at Harvard, the general preliminary course
on mediaeval and modern history, which most would-be
students of history are obliged to take first, enrolled 439
students. Among the courses dealing with particular periods,
that on American History since 1783 stood at the top in
respect of numbers, with 210 ; European History since 1750
and American History before 1783 ran one another close with
171 and 169 respectively. Then came a great fall in numbers
to English Constitutional History since 1760 with 107; and
another great fall to Mediaeval English Constitutional History
with 54, the History of the Eastern Question with 48, and
England 1485 — 1688 with 44. In the ten other courses given
that year the numbers ranged from 22 to 3. To show the
large part played by American History, it must be added that
among the courses given under the head of Political Economy
was one on American Economic History which drew 94
students; and that in the Historical Seminary out of 25
students 17 worked at topics in American History. As a result
alike of popular demand and of the awakening of a keen intel-
lectual interest in the subject, the greater universities are
finding it desirable to constitute two full professorships in
American History, dividing the field most commonly at the
year 1783. The whole movement is full of promise; it has
found an organ in the American Historical Review, and the
study of American History is evidently entering into the scien-
tific stage. Already more than one popular notion as to the
relations between the English of Britain and the English of

ioo The Teaching of History in America.

America in the 17 th and 18th centuries is being abandoned to
ill-informed Americanophils on the eastern side of the Atlantic.

The significance of the study of American History for the
political life of the American people, especially at a time when
it is assuming new responsibilities, is too obvious for comment.
It is heightened by the fact that, side by side with the narrative
courses, there are an increasing number of courses being
established in the greater universities which are devoted to the
comparative study of political institutions. At Harvard these
are grouped together under the heading "Government," and
are included within the Department of History; elsewhere
they are differently designated and grouped; but the general
result is much the same. They everywhere form a useful
supplement to the "purely historical" courses; and in most
cases they are quite concrete and "inductive" in their method.
The more advanced courses, — such as that which at Harvard
brings together a score of graduate and senior students, after
an adequate preliminary preparation, to compare the working
of the present political mechanism of England, France,
Germany, and the United States, — constitute schools of
Politics in the truest sense.

Next to the organization of the courses, the most striking
feature in the American academic system is to be found in the
Graduate Schools, which, under various names and varying
organization, have grown up in all the larger universities.
That at Harvard, for instance, numbers some 300 men; of
whom about one-third are ordinary B.A.s of Harvard, and
of the rest the great majority B.A.s of some other college of
good standing (perhaps a fifth of them having also spent a year
or two as undergraduates at Harvard, and added the Harvard
degree to their earlier one). Out of the 300, perhaps every
sixth or seventh pursues studies which lie chiefly in the realm
of History and Political Science. After being accepted by
the Committee on Admission from other colleges as "equal
to a Harvard B.A." or having performed, if necessary, an

The Teaching of History in America. 101

assigned amount of work to bring them up to that standard,
a student in the Graduate School may become a candidate for
the degree of M.A., which is conferred only after passing satis-
factorily in four courses of a certain grade. Or, if he can
afford to stay two or three years, he may aspire to the degree
of Ph.D. The doctorate is now coming to be the necessary
avenue to any employment as an instructor in an American
university; and it is aimed at by all the more ambitious
members of the Graduate School. Accordingly the greater
universities are all realising the need of jealously safeguarding
its quality; and in the year 1898 it was secured in Harvard
by 26 persons alone, of whom 3 were historians.

The conditions of the doctorate differ widely from place
to place. In Harvard they are (1) a good preliminary educa-
tion, (2) a fair knowledge of a certain general field, put
together from a wide range of choice allowed by an official
programme, (3) a more intimate knowledge of a special field,
e.g. American Colonial History, or the Mediaeval Constitutional
History of England, and (4) a dissertation based on the
original investigation of some subject falling within the special
field. More weight has come to be attached of late years to
general culture, and to an intelligent appreciation of the signifi-
cance of the larger movements of History : students allowed to
give an almost exclusive attention to their special field and
the preparation of their dissertation were already beginning to
display the unfortunate results of excessive and premature
specialisation. It is especially necessary to utilize the exami-
nation for the doctorate to secure a due correlation of studies,
under a system of freedom of election and of examination for
the B.A. degree on the single course.

The work of research carried on by the graduate student
with a view to his doctoral dissertation finds its point of
contact with the general academic life in the organization of
the Seminary. Having chosen his subject the student is placed
under the oversight of that one of the professors whose intel-

102 The Teaching of History in America.

lectual interests it most nearly touches, and from time to time
takes counsel with him. The seminary, a fortnightly meeting,
presided over by a professor, of graduate students (with occa-
sional "seniors," i.e. 4th year undergraduates) all engaged in
similar labours, is occupied with the reading or oral exposition
of their "results." Its chief value lies in the salutary pressure
which it brings to bear on the students to take stock once or
twice a year of the progress of their investigations, to dis-
entangle their conclusions and put them into shape, and so
escape the danger of being overwhelmed by their accumulated
data. A subsidiary purpose is to afford the other members of
the seminary an object-lesson of what to do and what to avoid
in the presentation of their material.

When the seminary was imported from Germany some
twenty years ago, somewhat exaggerated expectations were
entertained of its efficiency in stimulating intellectual activity.
It was pictured as a group of ardent fellow-workers coopera-
tively engaged, though with a certain division of labour, in the
pursuit of historic truth. In some places a particular room or
even a suite of rooms was set apart for the seminary. Here they
could hold their meetings, and here, with a special collection
of sources and authorities at their elbow, they could pursue their
labours apart from the vulgar mass of undergraduates. But
several causes have rendered it difficult to carry out this ideal.
It is not easy to find a subject for investigation which is
capable of being broken up into a group of topics independent
enough to satisfy the student's craving for a subject of his own,
and connected enough to furnish a common interest. Even
when this can be done one year, the mere fact that students are
often engaged two or even three years upon their dissertation,
would make it impossible to create a common interest every
year. Accordingly, it must be confessed that most of the
members of a seminary, having no special knowledge of
the subject assigned to a particular afternoon, take only a
languid interest in what is set before them, and contribute

TJie Teaching of History in America. 103

little in the way of discussion; while the professor who presides
soon exhausts the generalities which occur to him. In con-
sequence, the enthusiasm for "the seminary method" is evi-
dently lessening; and in some quarters there are visible
tendencies towards disintegration. There is the less need for
regret, because the advanced courses, which are provided in
much greater abundance in the larger American universities
than in Germany, satisfy to some extent the same purpose as
the Seminar was designed to accomplish, i.e. the promotion of
original investigation. Still the introduction of the seminary
marked a stage in the approach to the higher ideals of a
university; and it still forms a useful part of the academic
machinery.

The conditions of the doctorate, if they can be main-
tained,— and there seems no reason for alarm in this regard, so
far as the greater institutions are concerned — provide a very
effective stimulus towards research. But a certain influence in
the same direction has already been exercised, — and this
influence will probably grow, — by the markedly hierarchical
organization of the teaching body. A graduate student of
distinct ability, even before he has secured his Ph.D., can
usually add considerably to his income and gain valuable
experience, by acting for a year or so as "assistant" in a
course, — conducting conferences, reading examination papers,
and generally making himself useful at the instructor's behest.
Thus at Harvard in 1897—8 eight such assistants were em-
ployed in the teaching of History and Government. Having
taken the doctorate, such a man, if there happens to be room
for him, may be engaged as an "Instructor" on a yearly tenure.
The term "instructor," it must be explained, is used in
Harvard in two senses : for every teacher in independent
charge of a course, including the Professors; and also for the
lowest grade of appointment to an independent charge. If he
succeeds, the "Instructor" (in this latter sense) may be given
an appointment for three years with the same title but with

104 The Teaching of History in America.

a seat in the " Faculty," which discusses all questions of
curriculum and graduation. The next stages are appointment
as Assistant-Professor for five years ; a second appointment for
the same term with a higher salary; and finally appointment as
full Professor "without limit of term." It needs no saying that
this process is often greatly shortened, that instructors some-
times go elsewhere and are recalled to higher positions, and
that professors are introduced from outside. But in no case
are vacancies advertised and testimonials invited : American
scholars, like Scotch divines or German professors, have to
wait for a "call." In "extending" such "a call," or in grant-
ing promotion, the governing bodies are necessarily influenced
by a number of considerations ; but one of the weightiest of
these considerations is always the printed work of the available
men. In the bustling atmosphere of America the young
assistant or instructor is so likely to become immersed in the
details of examination and administration, that any circum-
stance is to be valued which reminds him that to save a little
time for a piece of independent investigation may after all be
his most prudent policy.

So far as the function of a university in the extension of
knowledge is concerned, the academic situation is full of
promise. The chief source of anxiety is the condition of
general culture. But this is mainly a matter for the schools ;
and of them the present writer is not competent to speak.

CAMBRIDGE ; PRINTED BY J. & C F. CLAY, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

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