REVIEWS OF BOOKS

La Enseñanza de la Historia. Por RAFAEL ALTAMIRA, Secretario del Museo Pedagógico Nacional, etc. (Madrid: Libreria de Victoriano Suárez. 1895. Pp. xii, 457.)

ALTHOUGH nominally a second edition, this is really a new work; for the first edition, printed in 1891, was not put on sale generally, but was privately circulated. In its preparation Mr. Altamira has evidently had two objects in view, the improvement of historical teaching in Spain, and the advancement of intelligent historical study. After a brief declaration of his pedagogical principles, he takes a rapid survey of the present condition of historical teaching in Europe and the United States. This sketch is interesting and seems to be based on both personal experience and a careful examination of a mass of recent literature.

The proper scope of history is the subject of the third chapter, and it is discussed, first historically, and then in the light of contemporary opin ion. Starting from the classical idea of history as the narrative of the political life of states, Altamira traces the gradual broadening of this conception under the influence of the continual increase of knowledge and the expansion of human interests. Only glimpses of the truth that history is more than past politics can be found before the eighteenth century. In that century the first great representative of the newer conception was Voltaire, but it was also advanced with great distinctness in Spain. Sarmiento in 1775 declared that history should give an account not only of military events but of the physical, geographical, political, moral, theological, and literary phenomena of the national life. Jovel lanos (1778) asserted that history should unfold the origin and development of the national constitution, of the civil and political hierarchy, of legislation and customs, of the national glory and the national poverty. Masdeu and Capmany a little later produced brilliant examples of the new history. Yet among all the writers of the eighteenth century Altamira selects Volney as representing the fullest development of these ideas. In 1794, as professor of history in the newly founded École Normale, Volney drew up a programme of history. In it he discussed the certainty of history, its importance, its utility as a study, and other pedagogical questions. This was followed by a proposal of a summary of general history to comprise the progress of the arts, the sciences, public and private morals, and the ideas in regard to them, legislation, emigration, mixture

of races, influence of physical environment, etc.

2

How many of the great

est names in the succeeding century were to be identified with the carrying out of this programme! Volney, however, still attached primary importance to political history. The following has a very familiar and modern sound. "I confess that, in my view, the political utility of history is its sole and proper end: private morals, the advance of the sciences and arts appear to me to be only episodes and accidents; the chief object, the fundamental art, is the application of history to government, to legislation, to the whole economy of societies. So that I should be ready to style history the physiology of states." This is substantially the doctrine of Seeley. In the second part of this chapter Altamira insists that history should embrace the whole life of humanity. The fifth chapter is taken up with a survey of modern views as to the influence of Nature on history, and as to the proper subject of history, whether the state or the people. The classification of the material to be studied, its proper use and the criticism of it, and a list of printed sources, occupy three chapters of more than ordinary interest and helpfulness. The student will find in them not a few suggestions and bibliographical references in addition to those contained in Bernheim's Lehrbuch. The rest of the volume is purely pedagogical and treats of the use of text-books, secondary instruction, and the teaching of history in Spain.

The essence of Altamira's views on the proper method of teaching can be expressed in a few sentences. Such a summary, however, does little justice to the vigor and success with which he expounds them. Lectures and recitations alone are quite inadequate for imparting the mental discipline and practical training to be derived from the study of history. In all but the most elementary instruction there should be some work on the sources of history. The use of text-books and lectures alone burdens the memory and spares the reasoning faculties, implants a wrong idea of the nature of historical study and an excessive reverence for second- and third-hand authorities. "Students are left to receive and assimilate dogmatic results like a mysterious drug without examination." Consequently they come to believe that the larger part of history is incontestably authenticated or settled, and that there is little or no further need of investigation. The true text-books should be a collection of documents and works of reference to be used not instead of the sources, but as a guide to the study of them. "The true aim of historical study is the formation of the personality of the pupil, the awakening of his native faculties, especially the critical spirit, and of absolute respect for the truth and the real, caution in judgment and in generalization, and the renunciation of every supposition not authorized by the facts." To

1 From Séances des Écoles Normales, recueillies par des sténographes et revues par les professeurs; edition of 1800, Vol. I., pp. 78, 79; Vol. III., pp. 411-415.

2

Séances, Vol. II., p. 441. I give these references from Altamira and this space to Volney, because Flint, in his elaborate History of the Philosophy of History in France, gives only a very inadequate account of Volney, based on his well-known Ruins.

develop these characteristics the pupil must study primarily the objects themselves, and not descriptions of them or opinions about them.

EDWARD GAYLORD BOURNE.

Julian, Philosopher and Emperor, and the Last Struggle of Paganism against Christianity. By ALICE GARDNER, Lecturer and Associate of Newnham College, Cambridge. (London and New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1895. Pp. xx, 364.)

ness.

OF blind partisans and bitter detractors the Emperor Julian has had enough and to spare, both in ancient and modern days; of sober and impartial biographers he has had few. Among the latter Miss Gardner must be accorded high rank, for her book is a model of fairness and frankIts most conspicuous merit, in fact, is its complete freedom from partisan bias and the just discrimination with which it portrays the character and the conduct not of Julian alone but of his contemporaries as well, whether friends or foes. Even Constantius is generously handled and his attitude toward Julian and his relations with him are set in a true light. It is difficult to write about a character and a career like Julian's-so widely misunderstood, so persistently misinterpreted-without heat and passion, but Miss Gardner has succeeded admirably in maintaining her poise and in preserving that judicial frame of mind which distinguishes the historian from the special pleader. Indeed, if her book errs at all it is in the direction of excessive coolness. The enthusiasm for the subject of her sketch, to which she confesses in her preface, we might almost wish had been allowed a little fuller play and had been a little less rigorously held in check.

The story of Julian's life is told with admirable clearness and simplicity and with an excellent sense of proportion. A brief sketch of the

condition of the Roman world under Constantine introduces the reader to the environment in which Julian was born and bred, and serves to elucidate much in his career that must otherwise remain inexplicable. The account of the experiences of his boyhood, and the very interesting description of his early education and of his university life which follow, shed still clearer light upon the subject; for of few great men has it been truer than of Julian that "the boy is father of the man." The chapters upon his religion and philosophy, upon his work as a religious reformer, and upon his policy against the Christians are particularly good and display keen insight and sharp discrimination. The account of Julian's Cæsarship in Gaul is less satisfactory. Not enough of his achievements is told to justify the high encomium pronounced upon him and no attempt is made to analyze his military genius and to explain his remarkable successes. This is the more to be regretted because, though his natural tastes and his early training were anything but military, his imperial ideals and his plans for their realization can be understood only in the light of the fact that he was a successful and popular commander before he became

an emperor and that he owed his crown to his army. There are some other parts of the book where one cannot help wishing that the author had been more thoroughgoing and had grappled a little more earnestly with some of the difficult problems presented by Julian's unique and manysided personality, but even more serious defects than this any one would gladly overlook in a book containing the characterization of Julian with which Miss Gardner closes her remarks upon his place in history. We know of nothing finer and more discriminating than the following estimate of him:

"If we look at him impartially and yet with the sympathetic understanding that we can only obtain after trying in imagination to realize his point of view, we see in him not a genius of the first rank in statesmanship, strategy, literature or religious philosophy; not a character unequalled in virtue and strength, but a man who did something because of his earnest devotion to his ideals and who would have done more if he had been gifted with a surer insight and had moved at a less feverish pace. He was a good king and a strong warrior, as his epitaph says. Yet his conduct at Antioch showed him unable to meet all the requirements of a disordered state, and his neglect of precautions, especially in the Persian war, prevents us from ranking him among the great generals of the world. He wrote in what for his age may be regarded as a pure style, but he wrote too rapidly to produce any great work. He was a thinker and often throws a ray of light on matters obscured by convention and prejudice, but his mind was not calm and collected enough for us to rank him among great philosophers. His personal character is most attractive. He had warm affections, a strong desire to do justice, and an abiding sense of moral responsibility." . . "Yet with all his love of truth and goodness there were some potent types which he was quite incapable of recognizing. With all his desire for equity he could not always be fair to those whom he could not understand. In spite of his realization of the littleness of human effort in the universal system of nature and man, he could not see how powerless were his own endeavors to oppose a barrier to the incoming tide.

"Yet Julian was one to whom much may be forgiven because he loved much. If turning aside from the account of his short and chequered career we look to the main principle by which he was throughout guided we see that it was an entire devotion to the Greek idea of thought and life, a settled determination to prevent as far as in him lay the destruction, by what he regarded as barbarous and degraded forces, of that fair fabric of ancient civilization under which men had learned to venerate beauty and order, to aim at a reasonable, well-contained life, and to live in orderly society under intelligible laws and humane institutions."

A. C. MCGIFFERT.

An Advanced History of England. By CYRIL RANSOME. (London and New York: Macmillan and Co. 1895. Pp. xviii, 1069.) A History of England. By CHARLES OMAN. (London: Edward Arnold. 1895. Pp. iv, 760.)

THE publication in rapid succession of two histories of England, both written by experienced teachers of history, testifies to the need felt for at

compendious text-book on English history for the use of schools and colleges. Both books are designed for English students, and neither of them makes any special pretension to satisfying the needs of American teachers and students. It is exceedingly doubtful whether an English writer could possibly produce a book suitable for college use in America. This is not entirely owing to the natural difference in the point of view from which English history is regarded in the two countries, but to the fact that certain essential features in English history, as for instance the position of the Church in England, are unintelligible to American students without a far more elaborate explanation than is necessary for Englishmen who have absorbed a knowledge of ecclesiastical history from the very existence among them of parish churches and cathedrals. Professor Ransome has for many years held the post of Professor of History in the Yorkshire College at Leeds, one of the best local educational institutions in England, while Mr. Oman is well known at Oxford as one of the ablest history tutors in the university. Their experience has, therefore, been with different types of pupils, but both of them in their prefaces urge their practical knowledge of the needs of teachers and pupils in justification of their appearing as authors of somewhat lengthy and methodical histories of England. They do not cater to the general reader, whose needs are splendidly supplied by Green's Short History of the English People, a work not likely to be surpassed during the present generation for general purposes, though it is unfortunately ill-fitted by its very virtues for a college text-book. Both Professor Ransome and Mr. Oman have already gained considerable reputation as historical writers, the former by his excellent Short History of England, the latter by his Art of War in the Middle Ages, his History of Europe A.D. 476-918, and other works. Their latest productions, therefore, have been eagerly looked forward to by historical teachers and scholars on both sides of the Atlantic.

It must be said at once that Professor Ransome's book is marred by a great and essential fault. It is full of inaccuracies. However great may be the shortcomings of a text-book in other respects, they can generally be forgiven if the facts are accurately stated. But, on the other hand, however great may be the merits of a text-book in other respects, it must be condemned if inaccurate. Professor Ransome's book possesses many merits; the space given to periods and events is fairly proportioned; the judgments passed on historical characters are generally just; the accounts of military operations are excellent and illustrated by useful plans of battles; and it presents no partisan view of men or political parties. This is high praise; but every reader of Professor Ransome's little book expected these merits. What was unexpected is the inaccuracy, which makes the book practically useless for teaching purposes. It is hardly possible to look at a page without finding one or more mistakes. Turning, for instance, at random to the chapter on Henry II., the date of the Assize of Clarendon is given as 1156 instead of 1166 (p. 145), and a couple of paragraphs later the date of the Battle of Clontarf is given as