compiler of annals, they who read history only to be amused found him dull, and the moderns have not yet reversed the verdict which was passed upon him. Who ever heard of a candidate for honours taking Polybius into the schools? It is from the Latin historians that we might have expected so much and from whom we get so little. What do they tell us of ancient Spain--the Spain that Sertorius pretended he was going to regenerate, and whose civilization, literature, and national life he did so much to extinguish? If it were not for what Aristotle has told us in the _Politics_, what should we know of that mighty commercial Republic which monopolized the carrying trade of the old world? It never seems to have occurred to Livy that the political organization of Carthage could be worth his notice. His business was to glorify Rome, and to tell how Rome grew to greatness--grew by war and conquest and pillage, and the ferocious might of her relentless soldiery. The 'Germania' of Tacitus stands alone--unique in ancient literature; but what would we not give for such a monograph upon the Britain which Caesar attempted to conquer, or the Gaul which he plundered and devastated? The great captain's famous missive might be inscribed as the motto of his 'Commentaries.' Veni! vidi! vici! sums up in brief the substance of what they contain. It was always Rome's way! Rome swept a sponge that was soaked in blood over all the past of the nations she subdued. She came to obliterate, never to preserve. Her chroniclers disdained to ask how these or those doughty antagonists had grown formidable, how their national life had developed; whether their progress had been arrested by the conquerors or whether they had become weak and enervated by social deterioration or moral corruption. Enough that they were _Barbarians_. The science of history can be but little advanced by writers such as these, who pass from battlefield to battlefield-- 'Crimson-footed, like the stork, Through great ruts of slaughter,' and to whom the silent growth of institutions and the evolution of ethical sentiments and the development of the arts of peace were matters which never presented themselves as worthy of their attention. You may call this history if you will, in truth it is little better than Empiricism. The world is a larger world than Rome or Athens dreamt of, and students of history are beginning to realize that not quite the last thing they have to do is 'to look at _home_.' Such a work as the 'Chronica Majora' of Matthew Paris is a national heritage which it is shameful to allow much longer to be known only by the curious and erudite. Now that there is no excuse for our neglect, is it too much to hope that the day may not be far distant when the name of this great Englishman may become as familiar to schoolboys as that of Sallust or Livy, of Cornelius Nepos or Caesar--his name as familiar, and his writings better known and more loved? FOOTNOTES: