the Biblical Criticism of its third and fourth quarters are of a strikingly different character from the Wesleyan movement or the Deistic Controversy of the eighteenth century; and the distinction may be most shortly expressed by saying that in the eighteenth century the main appeal is to à priori arguments and to religious or philosophical dogma, while in the nineteenth it is to history and to the historical method that the disputants turn for their weapons. So, also, in Literature and Art, the Romantic Movement which marks the beginning of this century and is associated with the names of Wordsworth and Walter Scott, and the later Pre-Raphaelite movement led by Rossetti, and Holman Hunt, and Millais, and supported in certain aspects by Ruskin, originated in a return to earlier models and in sympathies which we may call historical. Similar influences have inspired our architects and our house furnishers: Pugin and Gilbert Scott and William Morris have gradually altered our national taste by taking us back to medieval examples. In the Drama we have at least so far acquired the historical sense that we should not be able to tolerate a Macbeth in the guise in which David Garrick presented him-a perruque and silk stockings, conspiring with his lady in a hooped skirt and a turban. Even in History itself, the whole tone and atmosphere have changed. The mighty work of Gibbon, however accurate in mere statements of fact, is falsified by a lack of historical sense and historical sympathy, such as incapacitated him from understanding either the early Christian Church or the life of the Middle Ages. One has only to compare him with Ernest Renan to see the gulf that divides history as we conceive it now, from the unimaginative and unsympathetic treatment which it received 120 years ago. So also our entire conception of the nature of language has been revolutionised within this century by a study of its history and by the consequent discovery at the hands of Schlegel of the Indo-European family of tongues, and of the cousinship of English, and Greek, and Sanskrit. Even the greatest scientific generalisation of the century—the theory of evolution-in a sense belongs to, and has itself profoundly affected, the realm of history, since it reveals the long process of infinitely slow development by which animal and plant life have come to be what they are. It is, in fact, the idea of development, the central idea of history, which, more than any other single idea, characterises the thought of the nineteenth century. Ours then is the century of development, the century of history. It is in accord with this fact that we find that the study of history as a separate subject in our Public Schools and Universities first emerges during this period. It would not indeed be true to say that History was not taught at all before 1800. The Professorships of Modern History at Oxford and Cambridge were founded as long ago as 1724 by George I. But these foundations seem to have produced no striking result either in the shape of original research or of influence upon University studies until the present century. The University of Oxford rather resented the endowment as a Whig political move. "Not only" says Dr Stubbs "did they acknowledge the receipt of the King's letter in a most contemptuous way, forwarding their letter of thanks by a bedell, but, when by due pressure and by the example of Cambridge compelled to send a formal answer by a deputation to the King, clothed it in such words as showed that the introduction of the new study was looked on as an unwarranted interference with the educational Government of the place." And it is quite certain that no holder of the Professorship down to the time of Dr Nares in the early years of this century did anything to overcome the sullen suspicion with which the foundation of the chair was first received. At Cambridge the only one of the Royal Professors of Modern History during last century whose name is remembered in this was the Poet Gray. So again in regard to the Public Schools it would not be exact to say that there is no trace of History having been taught a hundred years ago. Thus Dr James, who was Headmaster of Rugby from 1778 to 1794, used to devote the first lesson of the week, which began at seven o'clock in the morning, to the subject of Scripture History varied in a regular cycle with Goldsmith's Roman History and the History of England. This was, however, only the case with the Fifth and Sixth Forms. I cannot find that History was taught in the lower part of the school. And the single hour before breakfast given at Rugby appears to have been wholly exceptional. I have not been able to discover anything similar at Eton, Harrow, or Winchester. Even at Rugby one could hardly say that History formed a part of the regular curriculum. So that speaking broadly we may say that History as a separate subject formed no part of the course of studies at the Universities and Public Schools in the year 1800. On the other hand the curriculum, such as it was, embodied some of the most important facts of European History between the age of Pericles and the Revival of Learning, and formed in itself a historical document or relic of an extraordinarily interesting kind. The classical curriculum of our Universities and Schools which continued until well on into this century, practically unchanged, was itself in its origin a result of a movement for reform, a movement which like those of our own time assumed the shape of an appeal to the past and a return to earlier models. The history of intellectual progress is marked by a series of revolts against systems of education, in which the human spirit seeks to save itself from being strangled in formularies of its own making, by struggling back to a more primitive and less complex stage in its own development, by appealing from the Rabbis to Moses, from the Aristotelians to Aristotle, from the Fathers to the Apostles. Such a revolt was the substitution of the great classic writers for the works of the Schoolmen, a revolt consummated in England in the sixteenth century. Perhaps the essential advantage of this change was that it put in the hands of schoolboys and students books which, directly or indirectly, contained the history of Mediter ranean Europe at its highest point of culture. Scholasticism, as was natural from its deductive methods, had no place in its curriculum for history; classicism, although it did not teach history as a specific subject, yet offered its students historical material of the most precious kind. Thus while it is true that in 1700 history was to all appearances no more recognised as a part of the curriculum at Oxford or at Winchester than it had been in 1500, yet we must remember that at this later date our ablest scholars read, as a matter of course, the great masterpieces of Ancient History as well as the great Poets whose works illustrated--as nothing else could illustrate the history of the age in which they wrote. Thus we may speak of the classical curriculum as Implicit History, because it contained in itself, not consciously disengaged from literature, a mass of historical material. At the close of the eighteenth century, however, classicism had in effect fallen too completely into the hands of the commentator and the versifier, and the subject-matter of the great classic writers had ceased to be studied with the enthusiasm of the sixteenth-century scholars. The intellectual life of our Schools and Universities was torpid and unproductive to the last degree; the great stimulus of the Revival of Learning had spent its force. It may even be doubted whether Oxford at the very close of the scholastic period was quite so profoundly asleep as she was towards the close of the classical period. "For a moment,” says Mr Rashdall in his great book on the Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, "for a moment the "human world was brought into real and living contact with a "new world of thought and action by the New Learning': "but ere long classical education in turn became arid and "scholastic-as remote from fruitful contact with realities-as "the education of the Middle Ages. The history of Education "is, indeed, a somewhat melancholy record of misdirected energy, stupid routine, and narrow one-sidedness. It seems "to be only at rare moments in the history of the human mind 66 66 "that an enthusiasm for knowledge and a many-sided interest "in the things of the intellect stirs the dull waters of educa"tional commonplace. What was a revelation to one genera"tion becomes an unintelligent routine to the next. Considered as mere intellectual training, it may be doubted whether the "superiority of a classical education, as it was understood at "the beginning of this century, to that of the medieval "Schools was quite so great as is commonly supposed. If in "the scholastic age the human mind did not advance, even Macaulay admits that it did at least mark time. The study "of Aristotle and the schoolmen must have been a better train"ing in subtlety and precision of thought than the exclusive study of a few poets and orators." 66 If you carry your mind from 1800 to 1900 and survey the period between you will see that the significance of this century in the history of the higher education is that the single uniform curriculum of the classics which, with certain modifications (as for instance the great attention given in Cambridge to mathematical studies) had been handed down just as it was from the age of the Renaissance, has been broken up, that alternative schemes of study have been admitted side by side with the classics, and that even where the classics remain the chief staple of the intellectual training given, other subjects, in particular mathematics, history and modern languages and a little natural science have been superadded. The unity of the curriculum in the places of higher learning has been, for the time at any rate, lost and the era of specialisation has begun. The full effect of this immense revolution in our education is but little grasped by any of us as yet. However we are not here concerned with the general theory and history of our higher curriculum but with the fortunes of a single portion of it. The great impulse which the Romantic Movement in Literature led by Sir Walter Scott gave to the study of History took effect in general literature, in private reading and in private schools, more particularly in schools for Girls, some S. M. L. 8 |