"History," says Lord Macaulay, "is philosophy teaching by examples." The most practical value of the study of history arises from the aid which it can give us in understanding the present and in forecasting the future. Bolingbroke, on the "Uses of History," commands its study as a protection against the unexpected. The main purpose of any American, who to-day studies the history of the greatest republic of the ancient world, should be to discover whether or not the story of the rise and fall of that government teaches any lessons which might be of value to the American of to-day; whether the evils which were the causes of the overthrow of the Roman republic find any counterpart in the problems which agitate our own country. One of the greatest of American orators, in urging Americans to draw their historical lessons from the history of their own country, says that "when we go back into ancient history, we are bewildered by the differences of manners and institutions"; but sometimes it is with the earliest of nations that the most striking comparisons may be made, and from their history that the greatest lessons may be learned. The truth is that the progress of mankind, during that small fragment of the period of its existence upon this earth which we are permitted to see by the light of history, has been very uneven in the extent of its advances along the different lines of human progress. In the fields of scientific discovery and of material results human achievements, especially during the past century, have reached almost into the realm of the marvelous; but in many other fields--those relating to human reason, to knowledge of the human mind, to the relation between man and man, and to the science of government--human progress has been so slight that man's efforts in these directions must still receive the verdict of failure. The reason for this great discrepancy is perhaps not difficult to discover. It is easy for the mass of mankind to accept and receive the benefits which come to them from the struggles and mental efforts of the few intellectual giants whom the human race from time to time produces; but all this takes place with very little change in the minds or emotions of the mass of humanity. As, for example, the pages of Homer are studied, it is hard to say whether the strongest impression left upon the mind of the reader is that of the vast difference between the external life of that period and of the twentieth century, or that of the striking similarity between the qualities and emotions of the characters in these epics and of the men and women of to-day.