Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/231

1922 in the Holy Roman Empire on the medieval theory of the empire; there are essays in the Studies in History and Jurisprudence on matters of political theory such as Obedience, the Nature of Sovereignty, and the Law of Nature. But his mind inclined to the concrete rather than to the abstract; he had not that passion for 'seeing things together' which makes the philosopher. He was less interested in what the state should be than in what it was; he wished to know what it did rather than what it should do. He believed, indeed, that a knowledge of the past and the present was a guide to the future; but he did not, perhaps, investigate the implications or the validity of that belief, nor did he reckon very greatly with the part which ideals—ideals that stand above time and experience—may play in the lives of men. He was an Aristotelian rather than a Platonist; he turned to the 'polity of the Athenians' more than to 'the polity which is laid up in the heavens'.

As an historian he gave to his fellows a book which has been a profound influence for nearly sixty years and will be a profound influence for many more; an essay on the Life of Justinian by Theophilus, which appeared in the second volume of this Review; and a number of historical addresses and studies which range from the ancient Roman empire to primitive Iceland. His book on the Holy Roman Empire appeared in 1864, with a motto on the front page, which disappeared in later editions, verso Tiberim regit ordine Rhenus. It was a slim volume of 176 pages; but already, as is stated in its preface, it had been 'greatly changed and enlarged since it was composed for the Arnold Prize at Oxford'. It continued to be greatly changed and enlarged. In forty years there were four new editions (one of which—that of 1875—was reprinted no fewer than fourteen times), as well as translations into French, German, and Italian. It is curious to compare the edition of 1904 with that of 1864. It contains 571 pages in place of 176; and it contains in addition some 70 pages of prefatory matter. New chapters have been added, especially the fine chapter on the theory of the medieval empire; a profounder learning has given a new substance, and a deeper understanding has informed the whole theme. Yet we must not undervalue the original edition. Appearing in the same decade as Maine's Ancient Law (1861), it was no less of a landmark and perhaps even more of an influence. It suggested a new interpretation of the course of the development of the modern world; and instead of tracing, like Gibbon, the decline and fall of civilization from the happy age of the Antonines, scholars were henceforward able to regard the imperial scheme as something which survived, as a living idea and an active force, through all barbarian invasions and dark ages and tumults, and