The study of history nowadays may involve the scholar in years of drudgery, such as searching out and listing the exports and imports of the city of London between the years 1340 and 1400. However, the conclusions drawn from his discoveries may be of world-wide importance. The questions of tariff reform, wage-scales, taxation, and representative government will all be affected by the data which his scientific investigation will have brought to light. Those of us whose life-work lies in other directions can give no attention to the details of toilsome labor like this. But the results must always be significant for us. The great movements in the troublous advance of the nations from barbarism to civilization are full of lessons which we must learn. History, regarded as a series of wars, an unceasing fury of bloodshed and misgovernment, is of slight interest to peace-loving people. But history as a series of pictures, showing the conditions of life in various ages and countries, picturing the spread of liberty and equality, and the slow yet sure increase of justice—history viewed in this manner is one of the most stirring and educative subjects for reading and study.
How was the Roman Empire built up? What was the condition of the people in the days of Homer? How did the ancient tribes live from which the German nation is descended? What was England like in Shakespeare's time? These are some of the questions which we should ask. Many of the ablest brains in Europe and America have spent their lives in finding out the answers.
The following lists group the historians according to the nation which they discuss.
GREECE
Froude
Gladstone
Grote
Herodotus
Mahaffy
Plutarch
Thucydides
ROME
Cæsar
Farrar
Ferrero
Freeman
Gibbon
Hodgkin
Josephus
Livy
Mommsen
Pliny
Suetonius
Tacitus
ENGLAND
Cæsar
Creasy
Evelyn
Froissart
Green
Holinshed
McCarthy
Pepys
Raleigh
Smith, G.
Southey
Taine
AMERICA
Bancroft
Fiske
Irving
McMaster
Parkman
FRANCE
Cæsar
Carlyle
Creasy
French Lit.
Froissart
Michelet
Parkman
ITALY
Cellini
Hodgkin
Symonds
Villari
SPAIN
Creasy
Prescott
Spanish Lit.