last fulfilled.

[Sidenote: UNITY OF MODERN HISTORY]

I desire first to speak to you of that which I may reasonably call the
Unity of Modern History, as an easy approach to questions necessary
to be met on the threshold by any one occupying this place, which my
predecessor has made so formidable to me by the reflected lustre of
his name.

You have often heard it said that Modern History is a subject to which
neither beginning nor end can be assigned. No beginning, because the
dense web of the fortunes of man is woven without a void; because, in
society as in nature, the structure is continuous, and we can trace
things back uninterruptedly, until we dimly descry the Declaration of
Independence in the forests of Germany. No end, because, on the same
principle, history made and history making are scientifically
inseparable and separately unmeaning.

[Sidenote: LINK BETWEEN HISTORY AND POLITICS]

"Politics," said Sir John Seeley, "are vulgar when they are not
liberalised by history, and history fades into mere literature when
it loses sight of its relation to practical politics." Everybody
perceives the sense in which this is true. For the science of politics
is the one science that is deposited by the stream of history, like
grains of gold in the sand of a river; and the knowledge of the past,
the record of truths revealed by experience, is eminently practical,
as an instrument of action, and a power that goes to the making of the
future.[1] In France, such is the weight attached to the study of our
own time, that there is an appointed course of contemporary history,
with appropriate textbooks.[2] That is a chair which, in the
progressive division of labour by which both science and government
prosper,[3] may some day be founded in this country. Meantime, we do
well to acknowledge the points at which the two epochs diverge. For
the contemporary differs from the modern in this, that many of its
facts cannot by us be definitely ascertained. The living do not give
up their secrets with the candour of the dead; one key is always
excepted, and a generation passes before we can ensure accuracy.
Common report and outward seeming are bad copies of the reality, as
the initiated know it. Even of a thing so memorable as the war of
1870, the true cause is still obscure; much that we believed has been
scattered to the winds in the last six months, and further revelations
by important witnesses are about to appear. The use of his