Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/385

 mind, nor am I inclined to do so now. I still think that the aim of Historical teaching is the training of the judgment to be exercised in the moral, social and political work of life; and that, as an instrument of education, such teaching will seek its fittest material in those portions of History which have enough of living interest to stimulate research, but have not enough of immediate practical importance to rouse political partisanship; that accordingly we do best when we begin at the beginning of the history of the forces and materials out of which modern life has grown, and that, in so doing, we have a distinct advantage over those who start to work backward from the immediate interests of to-day. I do not now wish to enter on controversy about this; I know that it is not uncontroverted; I state it, however, as a principle on which I have taught, and have believed myself justified by results. As I stated it in my first, I stand by it in my last lecture.

The lectures of 1876 were given after several years of experience, during which I had learned my own weakness, and begun to find the way in which I trusted that I might be really helpful: years during which the study of History had greatly developed here, and in which we had tried to frame, and I think had succeeded in organising a method of combined teaching, which brought into play the ability of a considerable number of enthusiastic and laborious tutors, and which resulted not only in enlarged and improved schemes of reading, and enlarged and more highly valued distinctions in the way of class and prize, but also in very valuable and important work done for History in the way of research and in the production of books. At that time too, the University was engaged in taking stock of its means and requirements, in preparation for meeting the Commission which was understood to be impending, and which has since worked changes in our constitution, collegiate and academic, which are now only beginning to develope [sic] results. I attempted, in the two lectures which I delivered then, to take a comprehensive survey of the condition of Historical Study, so far as it affected our own material and method, both within and outside of our