century a glimpse of the events of ancient times. The best guide to the historic point of view of the generations that ushered in what we are accustomed to think of as the modern period is furnished by the _History of the World_ which Sir Walter Raleigh wrote toward the close of his life, late in the sixteenth century. Raleigh was not an historian from choice, but was led to his task as a diversion during the time of his imprisonment. The work as far as he completed it is in five books, the titles of which are instructive. First book, “In treating of the First Ages of the World, from the Creation to Abraham.” Second book, “Of the Times from the Birth of Abraham to the Destruction of the Temple of Solomon.” Third book, “From the Destruction of Jerusalem to the Time of Philip of Macedon.” Fourth book, “From the Reign of Philip of Macedon to the Establishing of that Kingdom in the Race of Antigonus.” Fifth book, “From the Settled Rule of Alexander’s Successors in the East, until the Romans (prevailing over all) made Conquest of Asia and Macedon.” It will appear that Raleigh did not carry his history beyond the early Roman period, yet, even so, it is a very bulky book, comprising more than eight hundred enormous quarto pages, an actual bulk far exceeding the extant portions of Diodorus. Raleigh very generally names his authorities in the margin, but even had he failed to do so, it would be easy to understand the sources on which he must have drawn. Obviously he depended largely upon the Bible for the early history of mankind, and for the rest he had access, no doubt, to the dozen or so of classical authors whose names we have had occasion to mention again and again. Naturally enough, the pages of Raleigh seem archaic to the modern reader, yet passages are not wanting which show the shrewd practical insight of the courtier and statesman. As a whole, the work had sufficient interest to be reprinted in 1687, a century after the author’s death. Indeed, until this time there was practically no world history in the field in competition with Raleigh’s that had been written since classical times. It is a curious commentary on the life of the post-classical times and of the middle ages that between the work of Diodorus, written just before the beginning of the Christian era, and the work altogether similar in scope of Sir Walter Raleigh, written sixteen hundred years later, there was no world history produced that is strictly comparable to either. Nor did the seventeenth century produce any marked change in the situation as regards the literature of world history.