Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/346

 THE REIGN OF HENRY VII.

(April 24, 1883.)

Y kindest friends will hardly be able this year to charge me with having chosen the subject of my public statutory lectures with a view of attracting an audience. I never, in the course of a long historical experience, met with any one who wished to attend a second course of lectures on Henry VII, or indeed with any one who expressed any interest in him at all. It is just possible that I may be suspected of a design to attract the admirers of the lady Margaret, by advertising a discourse upon her son; but, although the idea did occur to me, I set it aside as feeling it my duty to guard against any over-sanguine expectations. No; I chose the subject because I have to lecture, and, after sixteen successive ceremonies of humiliation, I thought that I had a right to throw some part of the imputation of dulness off myself upon my subject. If the men will not come, let it be as much Henry VII's fault as mine.

Yet, to begin with, it is a curious thing that the subject should be so dull; and perhaps my first point should be to account for that. I do not question the,- fact. It is so; but why? The period is full of interest: it is the beginning of modern as distinguished from medieval history; it exhibits to us, in their first definite and specialised forms, the forces which constitute the dramatic elements of the state of society in which we are living; the great powers in their newly consolidated condition, the balance of which makes up European history ever since. It is the age of the discovery of the