History is perhaps one of the most popular of modern studies. It is more definite in its results than Philosophy, and it widens the intellectual horizon more than does the pursuit of particular branches of Science, while it has less tendency than either of these to congeal into dogma. The methods of historians, also, have undergone a signal change within the last fifty years. The historical writers of last century, such as Robertson and Hume, were content to collate the productions of previous authors, to give a new reading here and a fresh deduction there, looking more to literary form than to the production of new facts. Such writers troubled themselves little about the People, but were intensely interested in the movements of kings, and in the sinuosities of statecraft generally. Anything else was beneath ‘the dignity of history.’ But this ‘dignity of history’ has long since been pushed from its perch, and nobody now regards it. Carlyle, Freeman, Froude, Macaulay, Green, and Gardiner, have each and all followed the movements of events as they affected the people, and not alone as they affected kings and statesmen. The result has been that history is fuller of teaching than before, is infused with a truer and deeper interest, appeals in stronger terms to our sense of justice, and lays a firmer hold upon our sympathy. It has, in short, become more human. Mr J. R. Seeley, Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge, has just published a series of lectures under the title of _The Expansion of England_ (London: Macmillan & Co.), which shows in a striking manner the progress which has been made in our methods of studying history and estimating its events. It has long, he says, been a favourite maxim of his, that history, while it should be scientific in its method, should pursue a practical object. ‘That is, it should not merely gratify the reader’s curiosity about the past, but modify his view of the present and his forecast of the future.’ The first lecture is devoted to an able exposition of this theorem, into which, however, we cannot here follow the author. He then proceeds to a study of England in the eighteenth century, discusses its old colonial system, points out in detail the effect of the New World on the Old, reviews the history of our conquest of India, and the mutual influence of India and England, and ends by an estimate of the internal and external dangers which beset England as the mother of her colonies and the mistress of her numerous conquests. The lecturer now and again drives his theory to a false issue, and in general gives too great weight to logical sequence in historic transactions. History is not dominated by logic, but by events; and although we may see in these events, from our distant and external standpoint, a distinct chain of development and progress, the actors saw no more of the future of them than we do to-day of the events presently transpiring. Apart, however,