OF SYSTEMATIC HISTORY. CONTENTS: PART I.-CHRONOLOGICAL, GENEALOGICAL, AND STA- PART II.—THE BIOGRAPHY OF ENGLISH HISTORY. PART III.—THE FACTS OF MODERN HISTORY-MILITARY; PREFACE. "In all labour there is profit," but the utmost profit is only to be attained by an intelligent economy of means in time, toil, and expenditure. The subjects of study are too many and various, the sources of information too costly and voluminous, the power of continuous research is too limited, and life too short, for each student to gather for himself all that it may be desirable for him to know, or at least to have ready at hand for reference. This work is not intended to supersede the labour of study, but to stimulate to systematic and profitable effort, by providing a storehouse of material carefully selected and arranged. These, as the elements of construction, the student will learn to use in solving the problems or establishing the principles of historic philosophy. Facts must precede theories, and must ever form the groundwork of Science. A manual which carefully selects, epitomizes, and classifies Facts, will exercise the memory and reflective powers more beneficially and certainly than artificial systems of mnemonics, or the loose generalities of history ready drawn by another hand. Unlike histories written with prepossession and political' intention, this obviously advances no theories, and has no prejudices; it provides the best seed for reflection, and leaves it to germinate in the independent action of each mind. Something more is needed than is acquired by the process of continuous reading.-The vivid pictures of narrative may remain to enliven the walls of the mind's image-chamber; but the mind has amused, not exerted, itself; and the memory has not become the book of ready reference which systematic study would have made it. Another speciality of this work is the study of history biographically. History is not the mere record of events -it is also Biography. The study of individual lives is the profoundest method of historical investigation, and should never be subordinated to the study of events. The grouping of biographies according to date reproduces the events of a period with accessories ignored by general history. There is a speciality also in its comprehensiveness. More than political history is required;—the narrative of conquest, kingcraft, and priestcraft is too partial. The historical men are the pioneers of national or universal progress. The representative men of Art, Science, Literature, Philanthropy, and Piety have helped no less, and often far more, to ennoble a people's annals, than those who usually occupy the high places of our national records. This extension leads logically to another. National history bears the same relation to universal history that biography bears to the history of a people. Our insular history is written over the whole face of the globe, and has no limits. To read it correctly, we must seek it universally. Further, there is a history of intellectual greatness common to the whole world, transcending all local or national history. As in the "dark ages" the learned of Europe formed a community of themselves, conversing and corresponding in one common language of the dead, so now, "the literary and scientific world," and like terms, designate a nationality of nations, an aristocracy of genius, rising superior to all minor considerations of parentage and fatherland; individual stars, which, combined, give lustre like the sun, around which the nations gratefully and adoringly centre. The Education of the present day must embrace such history as this, or it has no claim to be considered either thorough or liberal. It must increasingly be a disgrace for the professedly educated to be slightly acquainted with, or ignorant of, the representative men of all nations but their own. HURST COURT, ORE, HASTINGS. MARTIN REED. |