Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/384

 A LAST STATUTORY PUBLIC LECTURE.

(May 8, 1884.)

LAST statutory public lecture ought, I suppose, to combine the characteristics of an Apologia and a Symposium; or perhaps, in more modern fashion, as befits a Professor of Modern History, the qualities of an after-dinner speech, of the defence and confession of a penitent, of the last will and testament of one who has something to leave. I do not know that, in what I am going to say, I shall strike exactly on any one of such notes; but there are some things that I ought to say, some that I wish to say, and some that I can say to fill up the prescribed three-quarters of an hour. I will ask for your tolerance and sympathy for what I have to say, whether in jest or in earnest; for you will believe me when I say that even the last statutory public lecture is a matter which mingles pleasure with pain, in no slight measure of both.

Seventeen years ago, in the address which I delivered in this room by way of inaugural lecture, and eight years ago, when I was approaching the end of my first decade of office, I ventured to make the statutory public lecture an opportunity of stating what seemed to me to be points of interest touching the study of History, in relation to persons, subjects and methods of teaching. The inaugural lecture contained, as was very natural, some crude and carelessly treated material; I said some things which were misunderstood, and some which I had better not have said at all; probably both are forgotten by this time. But, as to the main object of the lecture, the stating of the proper part which the teaching of History has in mental education, I have not changed my