At present, however, this is not quite the case; for the old literary traditions are still alive, and prove somewhat irritating to Professor Seeley, who, though one of the most even-tempered of writers, is to be found on p. 173 almost angry with Thackeray, a charming person, who, as we all know, had, after his lazy literary fashion, made an especial study of Queen Anne's time, and who cherished the pleasant fancy that a man might lie in the heather with a pipe in his mouth, and yet, if he had only an odd volume of the _Spectator_ or the _Tatler_ in his hand, be learning history all the time. 'As we read in these delightful pages,' says the author of _Esmond_, 'the past age returns; the England of our ancestors is revivified; the Maypole rises in the Strand; the beaux are gathering in the coffee-houses;' and so on, in the style we all know and love so well, and none better, we may rest assured, than Professor Seeley himself, if only he were not tortured by the thought that people were taking this to be a specimen of the science of which he is a Regius Professor. His comment on this passage of Thackeray's is almost a groan. 'What is this but the old literary groove, leading to no trustworthy knowledge?' and certainly no one of us, from letting his fancy gaze on the Maypole in the Strand, could ever have foretold the Griffin. On the same page he cries: 'Break the drowsy spell of narrative. Ask yourself questions, set yourself problems; your mind will at once take up a new attitude. Now, modern English history breaks up into two grand problems--the problem of the Colonies and the problem of India.' The Cambridge School of History with a vengeance! In a paper read at the South Kensington Museum in 1884, Professor Seeley observes: 'The essential point is this, that we should recognise that to study history is to study not merely a narrative, but _at the same time_ certain theoretical studies.' He then proceeds to name them:--Political philosophy, the comparative study of legal institutions, political economy, and international law.