Doubtless trade plays a larger part in political development than many people think. And desire for trade and wealth was a great motive in the upbuilding of the Athenian empire out of the Delian League. It is a shady chapter, like many another island annexation. Similarly it may be said that our spoiling the Dutch of New Netherland was questionable. Yet but for that we might have had no United States. Politically speaking, out of evil good has come. It was the half-pirated wealth of Venice that led to her artistic glory. So the wealth and the political pre-eminence that Athens gained out of the Delian League gave her genius means and scope for its perfect flowering in the age of Pericles. And that will bring us to our next chapter. English History in the Secondary School C. B. NEWTON, Editor. III. ADVANCE AND RETROGRESSION; THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR. Progress is the keynote of the period we have now reached. The rise of the House of Commons, extending over the last of the thirteenth and first of the fourteenth centuries, the great laws of Edward I’s reign, the growth of commerce, the national spirit induced by the national triumphs at Crecy and Poitiers are some of the larger landmarks in the forward march of the English nation during the hundred years following Henry III. Even the troubled years which followed the black death, the upheavals in society and religion in the latter fourteenth century, were the throes of progress. Then, but for the brief glories of Henry V, comes a time of halting--the miserable end of the long and useless conflict with France, the turbulence and lawlessness of the baronage, the weakness of the king, all combine to bring about a period of retrogression, when the pulse of the nation beats low and the tides of progress were stayed. Soon the purging bloodshed of the Wars of the Roses and the strong hand of the Tudors started once more the healthy growth which had been checked. Some such general survey, presented, perhaps on the blackboard by a line of the kind used to indicate seismic disturbances, or given in some brief direct notes taken down verbatim, will serve as a clearer of the atmosphere, an indicator of the trend of things during this difficult period. A Problem in Quantities. I say “difficult” because I find myself, when I reach the great reign of his Majesty Edward I, ’twixt a veritable Scylla and Charybdis, past whom I steer with annual apprehension. I know I must take a middle course, but I have not yet satisfied myself that I have found the _best_ channel for the precious cargo that I carry. Scylla is the danger of too little detail, the devouring monster of over-definiteness; Charybdis is the equal danger of too much detail, the menace of the minutiæ which defeat their own purpose, and confound in the whirlpool of mental confusion.