History for ready reference, Volume 3, Greece to Nibelungen

they are quite enough to hinder any two historical events from being exact doubles of one another. … We must carefully distinguish between causes and occasions. It is one of the oldest and one of the wisest remarks of political philosophy that great events commonly arise from great causes, but from small occasions. {1649} A certain turn of mind, one which is more concerned with gossip, old or new, than with real history, delights in telling us how the greatest events spring from the smallest causes, how the fates of nations and empires are determined by some sheer accident, or by the personal caprice or personal quarrel of some perhaps very insignificant person. A good deal of court-gossip, a good deal of political gossip, passes both in past and present times for real history. Now a great deal of this gossip is sheer gossip, and may be cast aside without notice; but a good deal of it often does contain truth of a certain kind. Only bear in mind the difference between causes and occasions, and we may accept a good many of the stories which tell us how very trifling incidents led to very great events. … When I speak of causes and occasions, when I speak of small personal caprices and quarrels, as being not the causes of great events, but merely the occasions, I wish it to be fully understood that I do not at all place the agency of really great men among mere occasions: I fully give it its place among determining causes. In any large view of history, we must always be on our guard against either underrating or overrating the actions of individual men. History is something more than biography; but biography is an essential and a most important part of history. We must not think, on the one hand, that great men, heroes, or whatever we please to call them, can direct the course of history according to their own will and pleasure, perhaps according to their mere caprice, with no danger of their will being thwarted, unless it should run counter to the will of some other great man or hero of equal or greater power. … On the other hand, we must not deem that the course of history is so governed by general laws, that it is so completely in bondage to almost mechanical powers, that there is no room for the free agency of great men and of small men too. For it is of no little importance that, while we talk of the influence of great men on the history of the world, we should not forget the influence of the small men. Every man has some influence on the course of history. E. A. Freeman, The Practical Bearings of European History (Lectures to American Audiences), pages 207-215. HISTORY: The Philosophy of History The philosophy of history is not a something separate from the facts of history, but a something contained in them. The more a man gets into the meaning of them, the more he gets into it, and it into him; for it is simply the meaning, the rational interpretation, the knowledge of the true nature and essential relations of the facts. And this is true of whatever species or order the facts may be. Their philosophy is not something separate and distinct from, something over and above, their interpretation, but simply their interpretation. He who knows about any people, or epoch, or special development of human nature, how it has come to be what it is and what it tends to, what causes have given it the character it has, and what its relation is to the general development of humanity, has attained to the philosophy of the history of that people, epoch, or development. Philosophical history is sometimes spoken of as a kind of history, but the language is most inaccurate. Every kind of history is philosophical which is true and thorough; which goes closely and deeply enough to work; which shows the what, how, and why of events as far as reason and research can ascertain. History always participates in some measure of philosophy, for events are always connected according to some real or supposed principle either of efficient or final causation. R. Flint, Philosophy of History, introduction. HISTORY: The possibility of a Science of History. Mr. Buckle's theory. The believer in the possibility of a science of history is not called upon to hold either the doctrine of predestined events, or that of freedom of the will; and the only positions which, in this stage of the inquiry, I shall expect him to concede are the following: That when we perform an action, we perform it in consequence of some motive or motives; that those motives are the results of some antecedents; and that, therefore, if we were acquainted with the whole of the antecedents, and with all the laws of their movements, we could with unerring certainty predict the whole of their immediate results. This, unless I am greatly mistaken, is the view which must be held by every man whose mind is unbiased by system, and who forms his opinions according to the evidence actually before him. … Rejecting, then, the metaphysical dogma of free will and, the theological dogma of predestined events, we are driven to the conclusion that the actions of men, being determined solely by their antecedents, must have a character of uniformity, that is to say, must, under precisely the same circumstances, always issue in precisely the same results. And as all antecedents are either in the mind or out of it, we clearly see that all the variations in the results—in other words, all the changes of which history is full, all the vicissitudes of the human race, their progress or their decay, their happiness or their misery—must be the fruit of a double action; an action of external phenomena upon the mind, and another action of the mind upon the phenomena. These are the materials out of which a philosophic history can alone be constructed. On the one hand, we have the human mind obeying the laws of its own existence, and, when uncontrolled by external agents, developing itself according to the conditions of its organization. On the other hand, we have what is called Nature, obeying likewise its laws; but incessantly coming into contact with the minds of men, exciting their passions, stimulating their intellect, and therefore giving to their actions a direction which they would not have taken without such disturbance. Thus we have man modifying nature, and nature modifying man; while out of this reciprocal modification all events must necessarily spring. The problem immediately before us is to ascertain the method of discovering the laws of this double modification. H. T. Buckle, History of Civilization in England, chapter 1. Buckle is not the first who has attempted to treat the unscientific character of History, the 'methodless matter,' as an ancient writer names it, by the method of exhibiting vital phenomena under points of view analogous to those which are the starting-point of the exact sciences. But a notion which others have incidentally broached under some formula about 'natural growth,' or carried out in the very inadequate and merely figurative idea of 'the inorganic; what still others, as Comte in his attractive 'Philosophie Positive,' have developed speculatively, Buckle undertakes to ground in a comprehensive historical exposition. … {1650} He purposes to raise History to a science by showing how to demonstrate historical facts out of general laws. He paves the way for this by setting forth that the earliest and rudest conceptions touching the course of human destiny were those indicated by the ideas of chance and necessity, that in all probability' out of these grew later the 'dogmas' of free-will and predestination, that both are in a great degree 'mistakes,' or that, as he adds, 'we at least have no adequate proof of their truth.' He finds that all the changes of which History is full, all the vicissitudes which have come upon the human race, its advance and its decline, its happiness and its misery, must be the fruit, of a double agency, the working of outer phenomena upon our nature, and the working of our nature upon outer phenomena. He has confidence that he has discovered the 'laws' of this double influence, and that he has therefore elevated the History of mankind to a science. … Buckle does not so much leave the freedom of the will, in connection with divine providence, out of view, but rather declares it an illusion and throws it overboard. Within the precincts of philosophy also something similar has recently been taught. A thinker whom I regard with personal esteem says: 'If we call all that an individual man is, has and performs A, then this A arises out of a + x, a embracing all that comes to the man from his outer circumstances: from his country, people, age, etc., while the vanishingly little x is his own contribution, the work of his free will.' However vanishingly small this x may be, it is of infinite value. Morally and humanly considered it alone has value. The colors, the brush, the canvas which Raphael used were of materials which he had not created. He had learned from one and another master to apply these materials in drawing and painting. The idea of the Holy Virgin and of the saints and angels, he met with in church tradition. Various cloisters ordered pictures from him at given prices. That this incitement alone, these material and technical conditions and such traditions and contemplations, should 'explain' the Sistine Madonna, would be, in the formula A = a + x , the service of the vanishing little x . Similarly everywhere. Let statistics go on showing that in a certain country so and so many illegitimate births occur. Suppose that in the formula A = a + x this a includes all the elements which 'explain' the fact that among a thousand mothers twenty, thirty, or whatever the number is, are unmarried; each individual case of the kind has its history, how often a touching and affecting one. Of those twenty or thirty who have fallen is there a single one who will be consoled by knowing that the statistical law 'explains' her case? Amid the tortures of conscience through nights of weeping, many a one of them will be profoundly convinced that in the formula A = a + x the vanishing little x is of immeasurable weight, that in fact it embraces the entire moral worth of the human being, his total and exclusive value. No intelligent man will think of denying that the statistical method of considering human affairs has its great worth; but we must not forget how little, relatively, it can accomplish and is meant to accomplish: Many and perhaps all human relations have a legal side; yet no one will on that account bid us seek for the understanding of the Eroica or of Faust among jurists' definitions concerning intellectual property. J. G. Droysen, Outline of the Principles of History pages 62-64 and 77-79. HISTORY: History as the root of all Science. Lost History. History, as it lies at the root of all science, is also the first distinct product of man's spiritual nature; his earliest expression of what can be called Thought. It is a looking both before and after; as, indeed, the coming Time already waits, unseen, yet definitely shaped, predetermined and inevitable, in the Time come; and only by the combination of both is the meaning of either completed. The Sibylline Books, though old, are not the oldest. Some nations have prophecy, some have not: but of all mankind, there is no tribe so rude that it has not attempted History, though several have not arithmetic enough to count Five. History has been written with quipo-threads, with feather-pictures, with wampum-belts; still oftener with earth-mounds and monumental stone-heaps, whether as pyramid or cairn; for the Celt and the Copt, the Red man as well as the White, lives between two eternities, and warring against Oblivion, he would fain unite himself in clear conscious relation, as in dim unconscious relation he is already united, with the whole Future and the whole Past. A talent for History may be said to be born with us, as our chief inheritance. In a certain sense all men are historians. Is not every memory written quite full with Annals, wherein joy and mourning, conquest and loss manifoldly alternate; and, with or without philosophy, the whole fortunes of one little inward Kingdom, and all its politics, foreign and domestic, stand ineffaceably recorded? Our very speech is curiously historical. Most men, you may observe, speak only to narrate; not in imparting what they have thought, which indeed were often a very small matter, but in exhibiting what they have undergone or seen, which is a quite unlimited one, do talkers dilate. Cut us off from Narrative, how would the stream of conversation, even among the wisest, languish into detached handfuls, and among the foolish utterly evaporate! Thus, as we do nothing but enact History, we say little but recite it: nay rather, in that widest sense, our whole spiritual life is built thereon. For, strictly considered, what is all Knowledge too but recorded Experience, and a product of History; of which; therefore, Reasoning and Belief, no less than Action and Passion, are essential materials? … Social Life is the aggregate of all the individual men's Lives who constitute society; History is the essence of innumerable Biographies. But if one Biography, nay our own Biography, study and recapitulate it as we may, remains in so many points unintelligible to us; how much more must these million, the very facts of which, to say nothing of the purport of them, we know not, and cannot know! … Which was the greatest innovator, which was the more important personage in man's history, he who first led armies over the Alps, and gained the victories of Cannæ and Thrasymene; or the nameless boor who first hammered out for himself an iron spade? When the oak tree is felled, the whole forest echoes with it; but a hundred acorns are planted silently by some unnoticed breeze. {1651} Battles and war-tumults, which for the time din every ear, and with joy or terror intoxicate every heart, pass away like tavern-brawls; and, except some few Marathons and Morgartens, are remembered by accident, not by desert. Laws themselves, political Constitutions, are not our Life, but only the house wherein our Life is led: nay they are but the bare walls of the house; all whose essential furniture, the inventions and traditions, and daily habits that regulate and support our existence, are the work not of Dracos and Hampdens, but of Phœnician mariners, of Italian masons and Saxon metallurgists, of philosophers, alchymists, prophets, and all the long-forgotten train of artists and artisans; who from the first have been jointly teaching us how to think and how to act, how to rule over spiritual and over physical Nature. Well may we say that of our History the more important part is lost without recovery. T. Carlyle, On History (Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, volume 2). HISTORY: Interpretation of the Past by the Present. But how, it may be asked, are we to interpret the Past from the Present, if there are no institutions in the present answering to those in the past? We have no serfs, for example, in England at the present time, how then are we to understand a state of Society of which they were a component element? The answer is—by analogy, by looking at the essence of the relation. Between a modern master and his lackeys and dependents, the same essential relation subsists as between the lord and serf of feudal times. If we realise to ourselves the full round of this relationship, deepen the shades to correspond with the more absolute power possessed by a lord in early times, allow for a more aristocratic state of opinion and belief, the result will be the solution desired. This method of interpreting the Past from the Present has been followed by Shakespeare in his great historical dramas, with such success as we all know. He wishes, for example, to give us a picture of old Roman times. He gets from Plutarch and other sources the broad historical facts, the form of Government and Religion, the distribution of Power and Authority: this is the skeleton to which he has to give life and reality. How does he proceed? He simply takes his stand on the times in which he himself lived; notes the effects existing institutions have on his own and other minds; allows for the differences in custom, mode of life, and political and religious forms; and the result is a drama or dramas more real and lifelike, more true and believable, an insight into the working of Roman life more subtle and profound, than all the husks with which the historians have furnished us. J. B. Crozier, Civilization and Progress, page 35. HISTORY: The Moral lessons of History. Gibbon believed that the era of conquerors was at an end. Had he lived out the full life of man, he would have seen Europe at the feet of Napoleon. But a few years ago we believed the world had grown too civilized for war, and the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park was to be the inauguration of a new era. Battles bloody as Napoleon's are now the familiar tale of every day; and the arts which have made greatest progress are the arts of destruction. … What, then, is the use of History, and what are its lessons? If it can tell us little of the past, and nothing of the future, why waste our time over so barren a study? First, it is a voice forever sounding across the centuries the laws of right and wrong. Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity. For every false word or unrighteous deed, for cruelty and oppression, for lust or vanity, the price has to be paid at last; not always by the chief offenders, but paid by some one. Justice and truth alone endure and live. Injustice and falsehood may be long-lived, but doomsday comes at last to them, in French revolutions and other terrible ways. That is one lesson of History. Another is that we should draw no horoscopes; that we should expect little, for what we expect will not come to pass. J. A. Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects, pages 27-28. HISTORY: The Educational and Practical value of History. It is, I think, one of the best schools for that kind of reasoning which is most useful in practical life. It teaches men to weigh conflicting probabilities, to estimate degrees of evidence, to form a sound judgment of the value of authorities. Reasoning is taught by actual practice much more than by any a priori methods. Many good judges—and I own I am inclined to agree with them—doubt much whether a study of formal logic ever yet made a good reasoner. Mathematics are no doubt invaluable in this respect, but they only deal with demonstrations; and it has often been observed how many excellent mathematicians are somewhat peculiarly destitute of the power of measuring degrees of probability. But History is largely concerned with the kind of probabilities on which the conduct of life mainly, depends. There is one hint about historical reasoning which I think may not be unworthy of your notice. When studying some great historical controversy, place yourself by an effort of the imagination alternately on each side of the battle; try to realise as fully as you can the point of view of the best men on either side, and then draw up upon paper the arguments of each in the strongest form you can give them. You will find that few practices do more to elucidate the past, or form a better mental discipline. W. E. H. Lecky, The Political Value of History, pages 47-49. He who demands certainties alone as the sphere of his action must retire from the activities of life, and confine himself to the domain of mathematical computation. He who is unwilling to investigate and weigh probabilities can have no good reason to hope for any practical success whatever. It is strictly accurate to say that the highest successes in life, whether in statesmanship, in legislation, in war, in the civic professions, or in the industrial pursuits, are attained by those who possess the greatest skill in the weighing of probabilities and the estimating of them at their true value. This is the essential reason why the study of history is so important an element in the work of improving the judgment, and in the work of fitting men to conduct properly the larger interests of communities and states. It is a study of humanity, not in an ideal condition, but as humanity exists. The student of history surveys the relations of life in essentially the same manner as the man of business surveys them. Perhaps it ought rather to be said that the historical method is the method that must be used in the common affairs of everyday life. {1652} The premises from which the man of business has to draw his conclusions are always more or less involved and uncertain. The gift which insures success, therefore, is not so much the endowment of a powerful reasoning faculty as that other quality of intelligence, which we call good judgment. It is the ability to grasp what may be called the strategic points of a situation by instinctive or intuitive methods. It reaches its conclusions not by any very clearly defined or definable process, but rather by the method of conjecturing the value and importance of contingent elements. It is the ability to reach correct conclusions when the conditions of a strictly logical process are wanting. To a man of affairs this is the most valuable of all gifts; and it is acquired, so far as it comes by effort, not by studying the rigid processes of necessary reasoning, but by a large observance and contemplation of human affairs. And it is precisely this method of studying men that the historical student has to use. His premises are always more or less uncertain, and his conclusions, therefore, like the conclusions of every day life, are the product of his judgment rather than the product of pure reason. It is in the light of this fact that we are to explain the force of Guizot's remark, that nothing tortures history more than logic. Herein also is found the reason why the study of history is so necessary a part of a good preparation for the affairs of politics and statesmanship. Freeman has said that history is simply past politics, and politics are simply present history. If this be true—and who can deny it?—the study of history and the study of politics are much the same. The kind of involved and contingent reasoning necessary for the successful formation of political judgments is unquestionably the kind of reasoning which, of all studies, history is best adapted to give. It may also be said that the most important elements of success are the same in all practical vocations. The conditions, whether those of statesmanship or those of industry and commerce, have been essentially the same in all ages. Society is, and has been, from its first existence, a more or less complicated organism. It is a machine with a great number of wheels and springs. No part is independent. Hence it is that no man can be completely useful if he is out of gear with his age, however perfect he may be in himself. C. K. Adams, A Manual of Historical Literature, pp. 15-16. To turn for a moment to the general question. I should not like to be thought to be advocating my study on the mere grounds of utility; although I believe that utility, both as regards the training of the study and the information attained in it, to be the highest, humanly speaking, of all utilities; it helps to qualify a man to act in his character of a politician as a Christian man should. But this is not all; beyond the educational purpose, beyond the political purpose, beyond the philosophical use of history and its training, it has something of the preciousness of everything that is clearly true. In common with Natural Philosophy it has its value, I will not say as Science, for that would be to use a term which has now become equivocal, but it has a value analogous to the value of science; a value as something that is worth knowing and retaining in the knowledge for its own and for the truth's sake. And in this consists its especial attraction for its own votaries. It is not the pleasure of knowing something that the world does not know,—that doubtless is a motive that weighs with many minds, a motive to be accepted as a fact, though it may not be worth analysis. It is not the mere pleasure of investigating and finding with every step of investigation new points of view open out, and new fields of labour, new characters of interest;—that investigating instinct of human nature is not one to be ignored, and the exercise of it on such inexhaustible materials as are before us now is a most healthy exercise, one that cannot but strengthen and develop the whole mind of the man who uses it, urging him on to new studies, new languages, new discoveries in geography and science. But even this is not all. There is, I speak humbly, in common with Natural Science, in the study of living History, a gradual approximation to a consciousness that we are growing into a perception of the workings of the Almighty Ruler of the world. … The study of History is in this respect, as Coleridge said of Poetry, its own great reward, a thing to be loved and cultivated for its own sake. … If man is not, as we believe, the greatest and most wonderful of God's works, he is at least the most wonderful that comes within our contemplation; if the human will, which is the motive cause of all historical events, is not the freest agent in the universe, it is at least the freest agency of which we have any knowledge; if its variations are not absolutely innumerable and irreducible to classification, on the generalisations of which we may formulate laws and rules, and maxims and prophecies, they are far more diversified and less reducible than any other phenomena in those regions of the universe that we have power to penetrate. For one great insoluble problem of astronomy or geology there are a thousand insoluble problems in the life, in the character, in the face of every man that meets you in the street. Thus, whether we look at the dignity of the subject-matter, or at the nature of the mental exercise which it requires, or at the inexhaustible field over which the pursuit ranges, History, the knowledge of the adventures, the development, the changeful career, the varied growths, the ambitions, aspirations, and, if you like, the approximating destinies of mankind, claims a place second to none in the roll of sciences. W. Stubbs, Seventeen Lectures on the Study of Medieval and Modern History, lectures 1 and 4. There is a passage in Lord Bacon so much to this purpose that I cannot forbear quoting it. 'Although' (he says) 'we are deeply indebted to the light, because by means of it we can find our way, ply our tasks, read, distinguish one another; and yet for all that the vision of the light itself is more excellent and more beautiful than all these various uses of it; so the contemplation and sight of things as they are, without superstition, without imposture, without error, and without confusion, is in itself worth more than all the harvest and profit of inventions put together.' And so may I say of History; that useful as it may be to the statesman, to the lawyer, to the schoolmaster, or the annalist, so far as it enables us to look at facts as they are, and to cultivate that habit within us, the importance of History is far beyond all mere amusement or even information that we may gather from it. J. S. Brewer, English Studies, page 382. {1653} To know History is impossible; not even Mr. Freeman, not Professor Ranke himself, can be said to know History. … No one, therefore, should be discouraged from studying History. Its greatest service is not so much to increase our knowledge as to stimulate thought and broaden our intellectual horizon, and for this purpose no study is its equal. W. P. Atkinson, On History and the Study of History, page 107. HISTORY: The Writing of History. Macaulay's view. A history in which every particular incident may be true may on the whole be false. The circumstances which have most influence on the happiness of mankind, the changes of manners and morals, the transition of communities from poverty to wealth, from knowledge to ignorance, from ferocity to humanity—these are, for the most part, noiseless revolutions. Their progress is rarely indicated by what historians are pleased to call important events. They are not achieved by armies, or enacted by senates. They are sanctioned by no treaties and recorded in no archives. They are carried on in every school, in every church, behind ten thousand counters, at ten thousand firesides. The upper current of society presents no certain criterion by which we can judge of the direction in which the under current flows. We read of defeats and victories. But we know that nations may be miserable amidst victories and prosperous amidst defeats. We read of the fall of wise ministers and of the rise of profligate favourites. But we must remember how small a proportion the good or evil effected by a single statesman can bear to the good or evil of a great social system. … The effect of historical reading is analogous, in many respects, to that produced by foreign travel. The student, like the tourist, is transported into a new state of society. He sees new fashions. He hears new modes of expression. His mind is enlarged by contemplating the wide diversities of laws, of morals, and of manners. But men may travel far and return with minds as contracted as if they had never stirred from their own market-town. In the same manner, men may know the dates of many battles and the genealogies of many royal houses, and yet be no wiser. … The perfect historian is he in whose work the character and spirit of an age is exhibited in miniature. He relates no fact, he attributes no expression to his characters, which is not authenticated by sufficient testimony. But, by judicious selection, rejection, and arrangement, he gives to truth those attractions which have been usurped by fiction. In his narrative a due subordination is observed: some transactions are prominent; others retire. But the scale on which he represents them is increased or diminished, not according to the dignity of the persons concerned in them, but according to the degree in which they elucidate the condition of society and the nature of man. He shows us the court, the camp, and the senate. But he shows us also the nation. He considers no anecdote, no peculiarity of manner, no familiar saying, as too insignificant for his notice which is not too insignificant to illustrate the operation of laws, of religion, and of education, and to mark the progress of the human mind. Men will not merely be described, but will be made intimately known to us. Lord Macaulay, History (Essays, volume 1). HISTORY: The Writing of History. Truthfulness in Style. That man reads history, or anything else, at great peril of being thoroughly misled, who has no perception of any truthfulness except that which can be fully ascertained by reference to facts; who does not in the least perceive the truth, or the reverse, of a writer's style, of his epithets, of his reasoning, of his mode of narration. In life our faith in any narration is much influenced by the personal appearance, voice, and gesture of the person narrating. There is some part of all these things in his writing; and you must look into that well before you can know what faith to give him. One man may make mistakes in names, and dates, and references, and yet have a real substance of truthfulness in him, a wish to enlighten himself and then you. Another may not be wrong in his facts, but have a declamatory, or sophistical, vein in him, much to be guarded against. A third may be both inaccurate and untruthful, caring not so much for any thing as to write his book. And if the reader cares only to read it, sad work they make between them of the memories of former days. Sir A. Helps, Friends in Council, volume 1, pages 199-200. HISTORY: Historical Romance and Romantic History. Sir Walter Scott. The prodigious addition which the happy idea of the historical romance has made to the stories of elevated literature, and through it to the happiness and improvement of the human race, will not be properly appreciated, unless the novels most in vogue before the immortal creations of Scott appeared are considered. … Why is it that works so popular in their day, and abounding with so many traits of real genius, should so soon have palled upon the world? Simply because they were not founded upon a broad and general view of human nature; because they were drawn, not from real life in the innumerable phases which it presents to the observer, but imaginary life as it was conceived in the mind of the composer; because they were confined to one circle and class of society, and having exhausted all the natural ideas which it could present, its authors were driven, in the search of variety, to the invention of artificial and often ridiculous ones. Sir Walter Scott, as all the world knows, was the inventor of the historical romance. As if to demonstrate how ill founded was the opinion, that all things were worked out, and that originality no longer was accessible for the rest of time, Providence, by the means of that great mind, bestowed a new art, as it were, upon mankind—at the very time when literature to all appearance was effete, and invention, for above a century, had run in the cramped and worn-out channels of imitation. Gibbon was lamenting that the subjects of history were exhausted, and that modern story would never present the moving incidents of ancient story, on the verge of the French Revolution and the European war—of the Reign of Terror and the Moscow retreat. Such was the reply of Time to the complaint that political incident was worn out. Not less decisive was the answer which the genius of the Scottish bard afforded to the opinion, that the treasures of original thought were exhausted, and that nothing now remained for the sons of men. In the midst of that delusion he wrote 'Waverley'; and the effect was like the sun bursting through the clouds. Historical Romance (Blackwood's Magazine, September, 1845). {1654} Those sticklers for truth, who reproach Scott with having falsified history because he wilfully confused dates, forget the far greater truth which that wonderful writer generally presented. If, for his purposes, he disarranged the order of events a little; no grave historian ever succeeded better in painting the character of the epoch. He committed errors of detail enough to make Mrs. Markham shudder. He divined important historical truth which had escaped the sagacity of all historians. A great authority, Augustin Thierry, has pronounced Scott the greatest of all historical divinators. G. H. Lewes, Historical Romance (Westminster Review, March, 1846). The novel of Ivanhoe places us four generations after the invasion of the Normans, in the reign of Richard, son of Henry Plantagenet, sixth king since the conqueror. At this period, at which the historian Hume can only represent to us a king and England, without telling us what a king is, nor what he means by England, Walter Scott, entering profoundly into the examination of events, shows us classes of men, distinct interests and conditions, two nations, a double language, customs which repel and combat each other; on one side tyranny and insolence, on the other misery and hatred, real developments of the drama of the conquest, of which the battle of Hastings had been only the prologue. … In the midst of the world which no longer exists, Walter Scott always places the world which does and always will exist, that is to say, human nature, of which he knows all the secrets. Everything peculiar to the time and place, the exterior of men, the aspect of the country and of the habitations, costumes, and manners, are described with the most minute truthfulness; and yet the immense erudition which has furnished so many details is nowhere to be perceived. Walter Scott seems to have for the past that second sight, which in times of ignorance, certain men attributed to themselves for the future. To say that there is more real history in his novels on Scotland and England than in the philosophically false compilations which still possess that great name, is not advancing any thing strange in the eyes of those who have read and understood 'Old Mortality,' 'Waverley,' 'Rob Roy,' the 'Fortunes of Nigel,' and the 'Heart of Mid-Lothian.' A. Thierry, Narratives of the Merovingian Era, Historical Essays, etc., essay 9. We have all heard how the romances of Walter Scott brought history home to people who would never have looked into the ponderous volumes of professed historians, and many of us confess to ourselves that there are large historical periods which would be utterly unknown to us but for some story either of the great romancer or one of his innumerable imitators. Writers, as well as readers, of history were awakened by Scott to what seemed to them the new discovery that the great personages of history were after all men and women of flesh and blood like ourselves. Hence in all later historical literature there is visible the effort to make history more personal, more dramatic than it had been before. We can hardly read the interesting Life of Lord Macaulay without perceiving that the most popular historical work of modern times owes its origin in a great measure to the Waverley Novels. Macaulay grew up in a world of novels; his conversation with his sisters was so steeped in reminiscences of the novels they had read together as to be unintelligible to those who wanted the clue. His youth and early manhood witnessed the appearance of the Waverley Novels themselves. … He became naturally possessed by the idea which is expressed over and over again in his essays, and which at last he realized with such wonderful success, the idea that it was quite possible to make history as interesting as romance. … Macaulay is only the most famous of a large group of writers who have been possessed with the same idea. As Scott founded the historical romance, he may be said to have founded the romantic history. And to this day it is an established popular opinion that this is the true way of writing history, only that few writers have genius enough for it. … It must be urged against this kind of history that very few subjects or periods are worthy of it. Once or twice there have appeared glorious characters whose perfection no eloquence can exaggerate; once or twice national events have arranged themselves like a drama, or risen to the elevation of an epic poem. But the average of history is not like this; it is indeed much more ordinary and monotonous than is commonly supposed. The serious student of history has to submit to a disenchantment like that which the experience of life brings to the imaginative youth. As life is not much like romance, so history when it is studied in original documents looks very unlike the conventional representation of it which historians have accustomed us to. J. R. Seeley, History and Polities (Macmillan's Magazine, August, 1879). HISTORY: How to study History. The object of the historical student is to bring before his mind a picture of the main events and the spirit of the times which he studies. The first step is to get a general view from a brief book; the second step is to enlarge it from more elaborate books, reading more than one, and to use some system of written notes keeping them complete. The next step is to read some of the contemporary writers. Having done these three things carefully, the historical student carries away an impression of his period which will never be effaced. Prof. A. B. Hart, How to Study History (Chautauquan, October, 1893). HISTORY: The Importance of a knowledge of Universal History. When I was a schoolmaster, I never considered a pupil thoroughly educated unless he had read Gibbon through before he left me. I read it through myself before I was eighteen, and I have derived unspeakable advantage from this experience. Gibbon's faults of style and matter have very slight effect on the youthful mind, whereas his merits, his scholarship, his learning, his breadth of view, his imagination, and his insight, afford a powerful stimulus to study. … I … wish to urge the claims of two subjects on your attention which have hitherto been unaccountably neglected. The first of them is universal history, the general course of the history of the world. It seems natural to think that no subject could be more important for the consideration of any human being than the knowledge of the main lines which the race has followed since the dawn of history in reaching the position which it has now attained. The best way of understanding any situation is to know how affairs came into that position. Besides the satisfaction of legitimate curiosity, it is only thus that we can be wise reformers, and distinguish between what is a mere survival of the past and an institution which is inherent in the character of the community. {1655} Our German cousins are fully aware of this truth; a German parlour, however meagerly furnished, always contains two books, a Bible and a Weltgeschichte. I suppose that during the present century from a hundred to a hundred and fifty of these universal histories have made their appearance in Germany. In England I only know of two. In Germany, Italy, and Austria, and, I believe, in France, universal history forms an essential part of education for nearly all classes. It is taken as a subject under certain conditions in the Abiturienten-Examen. I once had the privilege of reading the notes of a viva voce examination of a student in this subject who did not pass. It covered the whole range of ancient, mediæval, and modern history. I was astonished at what the student did know, and still more at what he was expected to know. I should like to see the subject an essential part of all secondary education in England, just as the knowledge of Bible history was in my young days and may be still. If proper text-books were forthcoming, to which I again direct the attention of enterprising publishers, there would be no difficulty in making this subject an accompaniment of nearly every literary lesson. … The advantage would be the enlargement of the mind by the contemplation of the majestic march of human events and the preparation for any future course of historical study. 'Boys come to us,' said a German professor once to me, 'knowing their centuries.' How few English boys or even English men have any notion of their centuries! The dark ages are indeed dark to them. I once asked a boy at Eton, who had given me a date, whether it was B. C. or A. D. Being hopelessly puzzled, he replied that it was B. D. Many of us, if we were honest, would give a similar answer. O. Browning, The Teaching of History in Schools (Royal Historical Society, Transactions, new series, volume 4). HISTORY: The Importance of Local History. From a variety of considerations, the writer is persuaded that one of the best introductions to history that can be given in American high schools, and even in those of lower grade, is through a study of the community in which the school is placed. History, like charity, begins at home. The best American citizens are those who mind home affairs and local interest. 'That man's the best cosmopolite who loves his native country best.' The best students of universal history are those who know some one country or some one subject well. The family, the hamlet, the neighborhood, the community, the parish, the village, town, city, county, and state are historically the ways by which men have approached national and international life. It was a preliminary study of the geography of Frankfort-on-the-Main that led Carl Ritter to study the physical structure of Europe and Asia, and thus to establish the new science of comparative geography. He says: 'Whoever has wandered through the valleys and woods, and over the hills and mountains of his own state, will be the one capable of following a Herodotus in his wanderings over the globe.' And we may say, as Ritter said of the science of geography, the first step in history is to know thoroughly the district where we live. … American local history should be studied as a contribution to national history. This country will yet be viewed and reviewed as an organism of historic growth, developing from minute germs, from the very protoplasm of state life. And some day this country will be studied in its international relations, as an organic part of a larger organism now vaguely called the World State, but as surely developing through the operation of economic, legal, social, and scientific forces as the American Union, the German and British Empires are evolving into higher forms. American history in its widest relations is not to be written by any one man nor by anyone generation of men. Our history will grow with the nation and with its developing consciousness of internationality. The present possibilities for the real progress of historic and economic science lie, first and foremost, in the development of a generation of economists and practical historians, who realize that history is past politics and politics present history; secondly, in the expansion of the local consciousness into a fuller sense of its historic worth and dignity, of the cosmopolitan relations of modern local life, and of its wholesome conservative power in these days of growing centralization. National and international life can best develop upon the constitutional basis of local self-government in church and state. … If young Americans are to appreciate their religious and political inheritance, they must learn its intrinsic worth. They must be taught to appreciate the common and lowly things around them. They should grow up with as profound respect for town and parish meetings as for the State legislature, not to speak of the Houses of Congress. They should recognize the majesty of the law, even in the parish constable as well as the high sheriff of the country. They should look on selectmen as the head men of the town, the survival of the old English reeve and four best men of the parish. They should be taught to see in the town common or village green a survival of that primitive institution of land-community upon which town and state are based. They should be taught the meaning of town and family names; how the word 'town' means, primarily, a place hedged in for the purposes of defence; how the picket-fences around home and house-lot are but a survival of the primitive town idea; how home, hamlet, and town live on together in a name like Hampton, or Home-town. They should investigate the most ordinary thing for these are often the most archaic. … It would certainly be an excellent thing for the development of historical science in America if teachers in our public schools would cultivate the historical spirit in their pupils with special reference to the local environment. … A multitude of historical associations gather around every old town and hamlet in the land. There are local legends and traditions, household tales, stories told by grandfathers and grandmothers, incidents remembered by 'the oldest inhabitants.' But above all in importance are the old documents and manuscript records of the first settlers, the early pioneers, the founders of our towns. Here are sources of information more authentic than tradition, and yet often entirely neglected. … In order to study history it is not necessary to begin with dead men's bones, with Theban dynasties, the kings of Assyria, the royal families of Europe, or even with the presidents of the United States. These subjects have their importance in certain connections, but for beginners in history there are perhaps other subjects of greater interest and vitality. {1656} The most natural entrance to a knowledge of the history of the world is from a local environment through widening circles of interest, until, from the rising ground of the present, the broad horizon of the past comes clearly into view. … A study of the community in which the student dwells will serve to connect that community not only with the origin and growth of the State and Nation, but with the mother-country, with the German fatherland, with village communities throughout the Aryan world,—from Germany and Russia to old Greece and Rome; from these classic lands to Persia and India. H. B. Adams, Methods of Historical Study (Johns Hopkins University Studies, Second Series, 1-2), pages 16-21. ----------HISTORY: Start-------- HITCHITIS, The. See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: MUSKHOGEAN FAMILY. HITTIN, Battle of (1187). See JERUSALEM: A. D. 1149-1187. HITTITES, The. The Hittites mentioned in the Bible were known as the Khita or Khatta to the Egyptians, with whom they were often at war. Recent discoveries indicate that they formed a more civilized and powerful nation and played a more important part in the early history of Western Asia than was previously supposed. Many inscriptions and rock sculptures in Asia Minor and Syria which were formerly inexplicable are now attributed to the Hittites. The inscriptions have not yet been deciphered, but scholars are confident that the key to their secret will be found. The two chief cities of the Hittites were Kadesh on the Orontes and Carchemish on the Euphrates; so that their seat of empire was in northern Syria, but their power was felt from the extremity of Asia Minor to the confines of Egypt. It is conjectured that these people were originally from the Caucasus. Their descendants, says Professor Sayee, are still to be met with in the defiles of the Taurus and on the plateau of Kappadokia, though they have utterly forgotten the language or languages their forefathers spoke. What that language was is still uncertain, though the Hittite proper names which occur on the monuments of Egypt and Assyria show that it was neither Semitic nor Indo-European. A. H. Sayee, Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments, chapter 5. We may … rest satisfied with the conclusion that the existence of a Hittite empire extending into Asia Minor is certified, not only by the records of ancient Egypt, but also by Hittite monuments which still exist. In the days of Ramses II., when the children of Israel were groaning under the tasks allotted to them, the enemies of their oppressors were already exercising a power and a domination which rivalled that of Egypt. The Egyptian monarch soon learned to his cost that the Hittite prince was as 'great' a king as himself, and could summon to his aid the inhabitants of the unknown north. Pharaoh's claim to sovereignty was disputed by adversaries as powerful as the ruler of Egypt, if indeed not more powerful, and there was always a refuge among them for those who were oppressed by the Egyptian king. When, however, we speak of a Hittite empire, we must understand clearly what that means. It was not an empire like that of Rome, where the subject provinces were consolidated together under a central authority, obeying the same laws and the same supreme head. It was not an empire like that of the Persians, or of the Assyrian successors of Tiglath-pileser III., which represented the organised union of numerous states and nations under a single ruler. … Before the days of Tiglath-pileser, in fact, empire in Western Asia meant the power of a prince to force a foreign people to submit to his rule. The conquered provinces had to be subdued again and again; but as long as this could be done, as long as the native struggles for freedom could be crushed by a campaign, so long did the empire exist. It was an empire of this sort that the Hittites established in Asia Minor. How long it lasted we cannot say. But so long as the distant races of the West answered the summons to war of the Hittite princes, it remained a reality. The fact that the tribes of the Troad and Lydia are found fighting under the command of the Hittite kings of Kadesh, proves that they acknowledged the supremacy of their Hittite lords, and followed them to battle like the vassals of some feudal chief. If Hittite armies had not marched to the shores of the Ægean, and Hittite princes been able from time to time to exact homage from the nations of the far west, Egypt would not have had to contend against the populations of Asia Minor in its wars with the Hittites, and the figures of Hittite warriors would not have been sculptured on the rocks of Karabel. There was a time when the Hittite name was feared as far as the western extremity of Asia Minor, and when Hittite satraps had their seat in the future capital of Lydia. Traditions of this period lingered on into classical days. A. H. Sayee, The Hittites, chapter 4. ALSO IN: W. Wright, The Empire of the Hittites. See, also, AMORITES; and ITALY, ANCIENT: EARLY ITALIANS. HIVITES, The. The Midlanders, who dwelt in the middle of Canaan when the Israelites invaded it. See AMALEKITES. HLÆFDIGE. See LADY. HLAFORD. See LORD. HLUDWIG. See LOUIS. HOARD. HORDERE. See STALLER. HOBKIRK'S HILL, Battle of (1781). See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1780-1781.