some notice of these important characteristics of the advance of a people, politically and intellectually. The growth of our Constitution, through nineteen hundred years, in which the Roman, the Saxon, and the Norman institutions became blended in our system of representative government and municipal administration, was always accompanied, through many a struggle for personal liberty and security of property, by the general progress of the people in knowledge and industry.
Instruction in History has ceased to mean the learning by rote the dates of prominent events, which fade from the memory in the absence of all interesting associations with the regnal periods to which they belong. For the boy or the girl, the young man or the young woman, whose training has been such as to make the history of their country something more than a dry catalogue of names, this Volume may suffice for the period of their pupilage. It perhaps may be sufficient as a preparatory book for the class-examination of young candidates for employment. But, whether for public or domestic instruction, it will open the way to the study of more elaborate works, on the subject upon which, of all others, it most behoves the youth of a free country to be well informed.