We have heard a good deal of late years about the Imperial policy of Elizabeth. By some it has been extolled for its success in enabling the nation at first to steer clear of, and at last to brave openly, the hostility of Catholic Europe. By others its example has been deprecated not for its inherent defects, but because it is unsuitable to our own times; yet there does not seem to be any sufficient reason why, on the one hand, it should receive from us the praise that was denied to it by far less discerning contemporaries; or, again, why it should not be deemed as inapplicable to this particular age as to any other in which it has been tried and found wanting.

My historical investigations for some years have particularly borne upon the relations of America to the Old World. They refer to the questions whether the populations and civilisations of the New World are there born and indigenous, or whether they are imported from the other hemisphere, and therefore in no respect distinct.

The arrest of Louis XVI. during his flight from Paris to Montmédy was one of the most important events in the history of the French Revolution, and probably one of the most important in the history of France. It also forms one of the best known and most admired portions of Carlyle's history of the Revolution. It occupies a whole book of the second volume, fifty-four pages of the Library edition. It may therefore be taken as a fair specimen of Carlyle's style, both in its strength and in its weakness. A careful examination of his narrative from a purely prosaic standpoint will throw light on his manner of composition. It may be said that it is un-gracious to criticise in the petty details of fact a narrative which has stirred so many hearts by its tragic pathos, and which in its broad outlines is consistent with the truth. But here lies the whole distinction between the historical poem and the historical novel on the one side, and history proper on the other. Carlyle would have said, if he had been asked, that his one object in writing history was to tell the truth. It is for this reason that he multiplies fact upon fact and detail upon detail, until he has brought the scene vividly before the eyes of the reader. His accuracy can be trusted where he has visited the scenes which he describes, and where he is not carried away by preconceived prejudices or ideas.In history truth is always more tragic and more moving than fiction.

In a former paper I pointed out some of the distinctive marks which appear to belong especially to the early British character. The importance of this is obvious both from a historical and from a political point of view when we consider the mixed and various types which in the present day inhabit our country.

The story of the imprisonment of Prince Henry of Monmouth by Chief-Justice Gascoign, for insulting him in court, is one with which Shakespeare has long made the whole civilised world familiar, and his dramatic representation of that supposed event had been accepted by Rapin, and after him by Hume and other professed historians, not merely as in the main true, but as an incident in an abandoned course of life during his youth before he became king, when Mr. Tyler undertook the task of vindicating the memory of the Prince from the load of calumny under which it had long laboured, and in his life of the Prince, published in 1830, asserted that ‘never did a young man receive from his contemporaries more unequivocal testimony of the practical exercise in his person of propriety, modesty, and perseverance than Henry of Monmouth did before he became king,’ but of his alleged contempt of court he says little. On the other hand, Miss Strickland, a.popular biographer, and Lord Campbell, a distinguished judge as well as biographer, both writing several years after the publication of Mr. Tyler's work, with the contents of which they describe themselves as acquainted, revive and insist upon as true the representation of the Prince as having in early life associated himself with buffoons and criminals, and the story of his misconduct in a court of justice and consequent imprisonment as the natural outcome of such a course of life. Moreover Miss Strickland professes to refer to previous writers as authorities for all her statements.

This paper will embrace the old question of the Picts in Scotland which has been so much discussed, and also the newer question of the inhabitants of Britain preceding the Celtic invasion of these islands which has already been brought by me before the Society. This newer subject now meets with more attention on the part of historians and other men of science.

There are many circumstances which tend to invest the Craft Gilds of the Middle Ages with interest. There is much that is picturesque in the hints which we get of the liveried gatherings in the great halls: there is something that appears exemplary too in the excellent work which was sometimes done, and in the relations which seem to have subsisted between fellow-workers. But apart from all that attracts our fancy and, rightly or wrongly, moves our admiration, there are interesting problems in tracing their origin or understanding how they worked. On this last point, indeed, no little light is thrown by the analogy of similar institutions in India at the present day. Whether in the amorphous condition in which they exist all over that country, or in the more crystallised and definite forms in which one finds them in Guzerat, there is a curious parallel—notwithstanding the many contrasts—between the one country and the other. The analogy would, doubtless, be most misleading, if we relied on present-day experience there for an explanation of the decay of the gilds of former times, but as a picture which may enable us to understand how the system is worked, and how industry developed in these strange conditions and with so much minute legislation, they are invaluable. But even with this help the difficulties in understanding their history are sufficiently great to render the inquiry as to the formation and decay of craft gilds distinctly interesting, though it is not easy to sum up results in a way that shall be accurate, brief, and clear.

The series of Records known as the Memoranda Rolls of the Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer is one of the earliest and most interesting amongst our historical documents. These Rolls begin early in the reign of Henry III., and become full in that of Edward I., increasing in bulk during almost each succeeding year in proportion to the growth of the imperial revenue.

I am not in a position to-night to imitate my predecessors, and give at present the results of any research into archives or correspondence. My contribution is purely theoretical in its character, though I trust it may have a practical bearing. I simply wish to call attention to some of the more obvious dangers now besetting historical writing, and to attempt to estimate how far certain new methods of work may avert those dangers. My paper is merely a recommendation of ‘co-operation in the production of historical works.’