Almost three generations ago, Carlyle complained that historians seldom tell us how our forefathers actually lived and thought: “What all want to know is the condition of our fellow-men; and, strange to say, it is the thing of all least understood, or to be understood as matters go.” Even in those days, no doubt, the public had Macaulay's classical Third Chapter; and J. R. Green's more recent work is priceless; but much more remains to do. Too rarely does any great archivist, like Simeon Luce, condescend (or, as some might say, rise) to pregnant exercises of imagination. The popularization of the linen shirt in the fourteenth century (argues Luce) marks not only an obvious advance in personal hygiene, but also an impetus presently given to the manufacture of rag-paper, and thus to literature; so that this century of social refinement became “the worthy precursor, or rather the indispensable preparative, of the age of printing”. Right or wrong, a suggestion like this is certainly stimulating, and deserves our gratitude.

It may be natural and right that universities should spend more time and labour upon the collection and minute criticism of evidence than upon weaving the threads into historical tapestry. But the fact is so; although to-day's public thirsts more than ever, probably, for history that shall be picturesque, yet reasonably accurate.