Many attempts have been made to establish with a degree of accuracy the Babylonian chronology, but all have failed from want of sufficient documents. Previous to the Assyriological discoveries the historians depended mainly, if not altogether, on the relations of Herodotus and Ctesias, and both lived a long time after the Persian conquest of Babylon; mere travellers besides, and unacquainted with the language of the country, they were often imposed upon by their dragomans or misunderstood them.

Ineed scarcely remind the Society, for the most part, of the subject of the Republic of Plato, the longest and in some respects the most important of his dialogues. But as it is as well not to take too much for granted, I will briefly describe its purport. Nearly all points of the Platonic philosophy are treated or glanced at in the Republic, but the ostensible subject is an inquiry into the nature and meaning of Justice.

Arestles spirit of wandering drove the ancient Irish away to farthest lands, from Iceland and Norway to Spain, Southern Italy, Constantinople and Jerusalem. They became of some importance as regards the kingdom of the Franks, and the parts adjacent. Unhappily, however, these thousands and thousands of men made no note of their doings, and in Irish annals they have left no, or but little, trace behind them; we are, therefore, forced to piece them together in laborious mosaic-work out of chance Continental traditions.

In the year 1290, when King Edward proposed to his Parliament that a fifteenth of all movables should be granted him by clergy and laity alike, and at the same time demanded a tenth of all spiritual revenue, his request was only complied with on the express condition that he would banish the Jews out of the country. The great expulsion, which followed in the autumn of the same year, has always seemed to me an event of a very curious and interesting character, and one deserving a more elaborate explanation than usually falls to its lot. It is quite clear that Parliament dearly wished to be rid of these aliens in race and religion, and, at the same time, the King could not have been altogether unwilling to fall in with the desires of his people, for, considerable as the tax might be, it was quite insufficient to compensate him for the great and permanent source of revenue upon which his forefathers had been wont to rely. The matter is popularly explained on the score of religious bigotry: the people, it is said, are ignorant fanatics, led on by a less ignorant but more fanatical clergy, and the King shares in the fanaticism of his people. This explanation is not untrue, but it is not the whole truth. I am quite sure that the deep-rooted hatred of the Jews in mediaeval England was not due to bigotry alone, any more than the feeling against them in Europe to-day is solely due to such a cause.

Whether we do, or do not, accept Mr. Palgrave's novel and somewhat daring estimate of Oliver Cromwell, as the drudge and tool of the army, we shall, at all events, probably agree with Von Ranke, that the Protector was personally responsible for the attack on Spain and for the French alliance.

In a previous paper which I read some years ago before the Society I declared my intention of discussing the reasons for which Frederick the Great made his famous attack on Saxony in 1756—an attack which roused half Europe against him, and brought him within a hair's-breadth of ruin, but of which he never seems to have repented.

In all nations of the world the development of art in its earlier stages has had an undefined but intimate connection with some form of religion, hero-worship, or superstition. In Greek mythology, for instance, we find that Boreas, the North Wind, aided the Athenians against the Persian fleet. By continual repetition Boreas gradually assumed to those who spoke of this event a personal form and character, and at last developed into a divine or semi-divine being. But lest this form and this character be lost, it is necessary that the imaginary attributes of Boreas should be stereotyped. Human imperfection renders this a task which can only be accomplished piecemeal. The poetic art celebrates his actions in its boldest flights of language; the histrionic art gives vitality to the poet's descriptions; while the art of the painter and sculptor permanises the idea of his outward form. Boreas becomes a god, and idol-worship commences by the aid of art.

1. It may give clearness to what I have to say with respect to History if I begin with some remarks on what seems to me a less desirable view of History, and of the method of treating it, than that which, I venture to think, should more distinctively, perhaps, than hitherto guide the proceedings of the Royal Historical Society. The less desirable view of History, as I think, is that of the literary man; the more desirable view of History is that of the man of science. And I shall introduce what I have to say with respect to the scientific view of History by some remarks on the literary view of it as set forth by Mr. Carlyle and Mr. Froude, and recently defended with much brilliancy by Mr. Augustine Birrell. Deprecating even the attempt to view History as a series of phenomena of which the laws, and hence the purport, may be discovered, Mr. Carlyle counsels us to ‘aim only at some picture of the things acted, which picture itself will at best be a poor approximation, and leave the inscrutable purport of them an acknowledged secret;’ and to be content if but ‘here and there an intelligible precept, available in practice, be gathered.’ And so Mr. Carlyle's most distinguished disciple, Mr. Froude, declares that the History of Man ‘seems to him like a child's box of letters with which we can spell any word we please;’ and therefore, with equal truth or falsehood, either progress or the reverse, or anything else whatever.

After the most successful conference held by the Royal Historical Society on October 22, 1887, and the admirable paper by Mr. Oscar Browning on the subject of teaching history in schools, it may seem presumption on my part to refer to the subject again.

The support and encouragement given by successive Sovereigns, Parliaments, Ministries, and departmental offices to the cause of historical research in this country have long since been gratefully acknowledged by the great body of European students. From the primitive practice of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when literary sovereigns and their great officers of state admitted favoured historiographers to a private view of current despatches, or when the same fortunate scribes were allowed to inspect the archives in the royal Treasury itself by the good offices of its guardian clerks, down to the modern system of ‘permits’ granted with a rare liberality by the Secretaries of State and other departmental heads to students of every rank and nationality to inspect comparatively recent archives, the Government of this country has manifested a consistent regard for the interests of historical truth which the Governments of other countries have been led in turn to emulate and even to surpass.