when studied in this spirit
that the true significance of history is disclosed, and the same
method which furnishes a key to the past forms also an admirable
discipline for the judgment of the present. He who has learnt to
understand the true character and tendencies of many succeeding ages
is not likely to go very far wrong in estimating his own.

Another branch of history which I would especially commend to the
attention of all political students is the history of Institutions. In
the constantly fluctuating conditions of human life no institution
ever remained for a long period unaltered. Sometimes with changed
beliefs and changed conditions institutions lose all their original
utility. They become simply useless, obstructive, and corrupt; and
though by mere passive resistance they may continue to exist long
after they have ceased to serve any good purpose, they will at last be
undermined by their own abuses. Other institutions, on the other hand,
show the true characteristic of vitality--the power of adapting
themselves to changed conditions and new utilities. Few things in
history are more interesting and more instructive than a careful study
of these transformations. Sometimes the original objects almost wholly
disappear, and utilities which were either never contemplated by the
founders or were only regarded as of purely secondary importance take
the first place on the scene. The old plan and symmetry almost
disappear as the institution is modified now in this direction and now
in that to meet some pressing want. The first architects, if they
could rise from the dead, would scarcely recognise their
creation--would perhaps look on it with horror. The indirect
advantages of an institution are sometimes greater than its direct
ones; and institutions are often more valuable on account of the evils
they avert than on account of the positive advantages they produce.
Not unfrequently in their later and transformed condition they
exercise wider and greater influence than when they were originally
established; for the strength derived from the long traditions of the
past and from the habits that are formed around anything that is
deeply rooted in the national life gives them a vastly increased
importance.

There is probably no better test of the political genius of a nation
than the power which it possesses of adapting old institutions to new
wants; and it is, I think, in this skill and in this disposition that
the pol