Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/61

 ON THE PRESENT STATE AND PROSPECTS OF HISTORICAL STUDY.

(May 20, 1876.)

N the remarks which I took upon myself to offer in the last Lecture on the present prospects of Historical study, I think that I managed to touch upon every point of special interest to Oxford and the educational use of my subject: to touch upon every pointy I say, because it was neither necessary nor possible to treat exhaustively of any one. I may have to recur in the present Lecture to some of the more general or more prominent topics, but I propose now to take a view of the broader side of the subject, Historic study and its position in England and Europe, as affected by the work of the last ten years; not with any special view to the educational importance of the work, but generally as a material and substantial branch of human knowledge.

Taking England first; the first point I shall notice is the great spread of the taste for history which has marked the period. This may be tested in two ways. The great number of new books and reprints of old ones, the large editions and re-issues of standard books, school books, and volumes of essays, and the number of reviews of historical books, or short historical articles in magazines and newspapers, are one branch of proof; the more lively interest taken in the preservation of historical monuments, whether in the shape of documents or in that of architectural and antiquarian remains, is another. I am not prepared to say that the last ten years have witnessed the introduction of any entirely new elements in either branch, or that we are not yet a long way off from the state of things