Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/386

 own borders, and to express certain views which I hoped might find favour in the expected reforms.

Without following the same plan, I propose now to take up, and, in the desultory way which is almost necessary under the circumstances, to remark upon some of the more important points which have varied our own history, as academic and historic workers, since that time. If I speak too much of myself, I will ask you to believe that it is not because I set an especially high value on my own services, for none knows or feels better than I do how much more I ought to have done, or how little my share has been in what has been done; still less because I undervalue the labours of my fellow-workers, who have had far more personal anxiety and more direct and more measurable responsibilities than I have had; it is mainly because the retrospect of my own work is forced upon me by the circumstances of my departure from Oxford; also because, not only as Professor, but in several other capacities, as Delegate of the Press, Curator of the Bodleian, a Member of Council, and as having a share too of the representation of our Oxford School of History before the outside world, I have had work to do and a place to fill which it would be very mock humility on my part to leave out of sight now that I am parting from such a home as this. You will pardon me, I hope and trust, because it is the last time.

A word first on our losses and our gains: and our losses and gains are so intimately bound together that I must take them in the order in which they most naturally occur to me, balancing one another by a law of compensation inseparable from all progress: it is surely a matter of congratulation that since 1876 we have so much enlarged the number of our students that our class lists contain nearly double the tale of names, and that, as a road to an honourable degree in arts, our study is now followed by nearly, if not quite, as large a body of pilgrims as any of the other honour schools. This is the result of no lowering of the standard of the History Examination, but of the greater educational vivacity of the University, of the increased interest felt in the country at