afford, if in their respective
spheres the evidence is treated with caution and knowledge, and if the
evidence from each is brought to bear upon the necessities of each.

The necessities of history are obvious. There are considerable gaps in
historical knowledge, and the further back we desire to penetrate the
scantier must be the material at the historian's disposal. In any case
there can be only two considerable sources of historical knowledge,
namely, foreign and native. Looking at the subject from the points
presented by the early history of our own country, there are the Greek
and Latin writers to whom Britain was a source of interest as the most
distant part of the then known world, and the native historians, who,
witnessing the terribly changing events which followed the break-up of
the Roman dominion over Britain, recorded their views of the changes
and their causes, and in course of time recorded also some of the
events of Celtic history and of Anglo-Saxon history. Then for later
periods, no country of the Western world possesses such magnificent
materials for history as our own. In the vast quantity of public and
private documents which are gradually being made accessible to the
student there exists material for the illustration and elucidation of
almost every side and every period of national life, and no branch of
historical research is more fruitful of results than the comparison of
the records of the professed historian with the documents which have
not come from the historian's hands.

All this, however, does not give us the complete story. Necessarily
there are great and important gaps. Contemporary writers make
themselves the judges of what is important to record; documents
preserved in public or private archives relate only to such events as
need or command the written record or instrument, or to those which
have interested some of the actors and their families. Hence in both
departments of history, the historical narrative and the original
record, it will be found on careful examination that much is needed
to make the picture of life complete. It is the detail of everyday
thought and action that is missing--all that is so well known, the
obvious as it passes before every chronicler, the ceremony, the faith,
and the action which do not apparently affect the movements of
civilisation, but which make up the personal, religious and political
life of the people. It is always well to bear in mind that the