A NEW EDITION WITH COPIOUS INDEX AND AN INTRODUCTION TO BY ELMO. FOUR VOLUMES IN TWO. VOL. I. CHICAGO AND NEW YORK: BELFORD, CLARKE & CO. INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN READERS. DIONYSIUS of HALICARNASSUS is said to have defined history as "Philosophy teaching by example." If this definition be accepted, then it follows that the student of history becomes also a philosopher. It is one thing to acquire a knowledge of dates, events and occurences, but another thing altogether to understand the philosophy of these events. The historian who simply tells us when and where battles were fought, who chronicles and only chronicles the rise and fall of parties, the coronation and the death of kings; who notes the ebb and flow of the shifting tides of national life, but fails to discuss the secret causes of these manifold changes, renders but a limited service to his readers. It is the true historian's business to dig down to the roots of these recorded events, and give some intelligible account of the causes that deposed a king or drove a party from power. Mr. Justin McCarthy in his admirable "History of our Own Times" undertakes to tell the story of the Victorian age; and he has succeeded not only in giving a pleasant and most enjoyable record of the stirring events of the last forty years, but he has discussed in a most impartial and honest manner the philosophy of recent history. Such a work as this was greatly needed. conviction is spreading and deepening, that while the study of ancient history is of great importance, a knowledge of what is transpiring in our own day is of equal The |