Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/11



HE preceding edition of this History has been most carefully corrected and revised, and the Publishers are thankful that the present one has not failed of a success more than equal to that which had attended its predecessor. The expectation which led them originally to publish and now to issue this revised edition of a history of this great country so as to meet the want of the great masses which compose so large a portion of it, has not been disappointed.

It is almost as vain to write the praises of history as it is unnecessary to write its apology. Whatever doubts may be entertained as to the merits of the classics as a means of education, history stands above all suspicion, and is pre-eminent not only as a means, but even as an end of knowledge.

We may regard history as in some sort the story of ourselves under circumstances different from those in which it finds us; which circumstances, however, time often repeats with remarkable similitude of detail. It is, indeed, more than this; it is the narrative of national as well as of individual life, and—in a higher aspect still—it is the narrative of the great human race. But even if we look on it only as a vast collection of biographies, we can hardly exaggerate the importance of its voice to us. It teaches its votary something of himself and of his kind which the profoundest philosopher without it could never know. If we except Nature and Revelation, what else is there beyond the domain of history? Indeed, it is the complement of these, and with these fills up all experience and all thought. But if this be true of universal history, it is true in a sense more confined and yet more intense of the history of our own country. The exceeding interest of this latter will let none of us escape. It is our text-book in childhood, but we have not grasped its wisdom or exhausted its pleasure in age. We delight in it, not merely because it tells of our own fathers and our own homes, but because it, more than any other, presents the broad surface of the people; because it is concerned, not only with kings, and statesmen, and warriors, but with the toilers at the plough, and at the counter, and at the desk—with the great middle class, whose growth in extent and power forms so large a portion of its page; because it exhibits a unity of design and a continuity of action which is not so patent, even if it exists, elsewhere; because it leads by marked gradations through the practical logic of great principles to that national product which we now enjoy with so much pride and satisfaction; because it is the voice of a people whose language is more wide-spread and more potent in the ears of friends and foes than that of any tongue on earth, and is enriched with science and with song to which few others can aspire.

On the other hand, the history of this country, as of all others, presents a corrective to that national pride and self-sufficiency which it may at first seem to engender. We, too, have come forth from the dark ages dyed with their superstitions and their crimes. We have lingered long indeed upon the threshold of this more exalted time. We can boast no great, unbroken unity of race, religion, and polity, as the Jew of other days might boast with justice. The Reformation found us as it found others, and did not find us first. We have made great national mistakes and committed great national crimes in our policy at home and abroad, and the sciences of political and domestic