Excerpt from Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Vol. 16: New Series In casting about for a subject on which to address you today I came to the conclusion that to speak on some abstract question connected with the study of history would at best be but a feeble repetition of What has been said before by my predecessors here, by professors in their inaugural lectures, and by many others in speech or in writing. Before an audience of this kind I need not defend the interest or the utility of our favourite study. You would hardly be here if you did not believe the study Of history to be useful, and if you did not generally find it interesting. I need not dwell on the fact that history is the mother, in more senses than one, of politics; and that, whatever else we should know as citizens, politicians, or administrators, we ought at least to know something Of the history Of our own country - how it came to be made - through what Changes it has recently passed - what have been its relations to other States down to our own day. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.