Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/116

 strong corrective, a tendency to educate men for advocates rather than for judges, it leads them into a habit of looking for all that may be said on one side of a subject, rather than for what may be said on both sides; and it certainly leads a man to give to the point from which his investigation started an exaggerated form and influence amongst the earlier competing influences which, as a matter of fact, it has outgrown, or of which it may itself be in some measure a resultant.

The occasional use of this method as a means of study is one thing, the exclusive use of it is another; the use of it as a means of inviting popular attention to history is a third. And it is perhaps in this its third application that it should be regarded with the most favour, but only as a step towards something deeper and sounder. An audience may he attracted by an able lecturer to listen to him on any subject whatever; he takes the subject of the day and works back; Turkey and Russia, we will say. Of course, if his audience is really a popular audience, they bring sadly little information with them to the lecture; a large proportion probably of the elder hearers can go back as far as the Crimean War, most of the audience will have come into this world of trial since that date. Their ideas of right and wrong will be very much prejudiced by the fact that England took a side in that war, and by the grand principle that whatever England does is right; some may be equally convinced, on equally sound principles, that whatever the Aberdeen ministry, that is supposing them to have heard of an Aberdeen ministry, did must have been wrong: probably some will have imbibed the belief that there is a subtle connexion between Russia and Ritualism, or between Turkey and religious toleration as exemplified in the massacre of orthodox Greek Christians and the protection of Roman Catholics and Protestant Missionaries. Well, furnished with materials, prepossessions, fixed ideas and expectancy, it would be a miracle if they did not come away fully persuaded of their competence to decide on the minutest questions of the last Protocol.

Really it does seem to me that this is beginning at the wrong end, and yet I confess it is extremely difficult to