SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL-BOOKS.*
IlisTourArrs repeat themselves, as Brewer nearly says, and they also repeat each other, which is worse. History books are sometimes, therefore, not very stimulating things, and where the teaching of youth is concerned they are chiefly good for reference ; the teacher and not the text-book is the thing at school. But text-books have their value, and some help a great deal. One that will be very welcome is a new Greek History for Schools,' published in Cambridge, and written by an Osborne master. This book is perhaps a trifle too long for the amount of information it conveys and for the convenience of the forms that are to use it, but it has some admirable features: It opens with what is certainly the best description of the " Early Age " that has appeared in a complete Greek History since Knossos was explored, and it is interleaved with fourteen maps and some forty illustrations, mostly photographs, and many of them quite delightful. The narrative is vigorous and rather specially clear, though in places a trifle long ; the arrangement is good, and though the emphasis throughout is rather upon the conventional things—biography and battles—than upon Constitutional questions, and what it is usual to call " tendenciea," that is unavoidable, and perhaps desirable, in a book for schools. Within its own limits the book is an unusually valuable and attractive one. Cambridge has done well by ancient history of late, for the new Short History of Rome,2 by Mr. Bryant, of Charterhouse, is also published there. This book covers the ground up to the death of Augustus in some two hundred and sixty pages, and, provided that the treatment be thorough, this is probably the most useful size of text-book for use even in the higher forms of schools. Mr. Bryant is certainly thorough, and he seems to have omitted absolutely nothing that should be known by anyone save a specialist; yet his narrative is extremely readable, and his account of the Revolution especially is a model of clear and interesting exposition. A very much shorter Roman History3 is published by the Clarendon Press; it is really Part IL of Outlines of Greek and Roman History, a work now two years old. The book is designed chiefly for beginners and revisers, • (1) Greek Hislory for Schools. By C. D. Edmonds, M.A. Cambridge : at the University Press. Ps. net.) ----(2) A Short History of Rome for Schools. By E. E. Bryant, M.A. Same publishers. (8s. 6d. net.) (8) Outlines of Roman History. By Si. A. Hamilton. Oxford : at the ciarentionPress. liner 60.1 —(4) The People of England. Part I.: The People in the Mating. By Stanley Teethes, C.B., M.A. London : William Heinemann. [2s. 6d.]---(5) A SOMICO Book of English History. Edited by Arthur D. Ines, M.A. Vol. IL, 1803- 1816. Cambridge : at the University Press. [Ss. 6d.)-0) A Source Book of London History. Edited by P. Meadows. London: G. Bell and Sons. [Is. 6d. net.]—(7) A Short History of Ireland. By Constantin Maxwell, MA. Dublin : The Educational Company of Ireland. [is. 6d. stet.]--(8) Ewnpe eitt00 Napoleon. By Elizabeth Levett. London Blackle and Son. (Si. 411d. net.}—{9) The Main Stream of European History. By the Rev. Frederick Harrison, M.A. Same publishers. [is. dd.]
and its value is its brevity. It gives a summary of Roman history to the death of Marcus Aurelius in one hundred and ninety
pages, and the summary is much more adequate than might, have been expected. It is a trifle meagre on the " Struggle of the Orders," but it has an admirable account of Augustus and some other interesting things.
Mr. Stanley Leathes, who wrote a particularly interesting book on the theory of education two years ago, has now
embarked on a trio of volumes on The People of England' for
use in the middle forms of schools, and the first of the trio has recently appeared. The books are to be read as companions to the ordinary history text-books, and they deal with all those matters which the text-book must omit, but without which teaching history is merely telling stories. Here are few of the things which Mr. Leathes discusses in his first volume, all with the teacher's clearness and with his own special faculty of being interesting :—The Stone Age, The Legacy of Rome, The Gift of the Conquest, Forests and Forest Law, The Changes in Warfare and their Effects on Ordinary Life, History in Stone, Apprentices, Moralities, Chaucer, The Universities, Printing, Changes in the Country-Side. The passages on Architecture, especially the chapter called " A Nation of Builders," form a delightful introduction to a subject that the schools neglect too much. It is a book which every teacher of history will welcome, but which one need not be a teacher of history to enjoy exceedingly.
A type of book which aims at supplementing the history text-book in a slightly different way is the " history source book " for schools—the book in which you read Chronicles, Charters, and Land Boca for yourself, and learn about the Plague from Defoe and the Restoration from Pepys. The fullest and probably the best series of these source books is that produced by Messrs. Bell (see Spectator, March 28th, 1914), but there is another published at Cambridge' which is of a slightly more convenient size, and has the advantage of illustrations and specially luxurious print and paper. These books are admirable for the teaching of middle-aged and bigger boys in the Public Schools and for the delectation of the ordinary man. When they are not used the fault will probably be that of the time-table, for time-tables as a rule contemplate only what is strictly " business," and are apt to discourage a novel method if it demands additional hours for its subject. Those who can get more time, or can use the books without it, will find their teaching much enriched by them. The latest addition
to the Bell volumes is A Source Book of London History,' which is the most fascinating of them all. After some extracts from
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the compiler prints a long narrative from the " Descriptio Nobilissimae Civitatis Londonae," that quaint rhapsodical preface to Fitz-Stephens's twelfth-century Life of Becket. Fitz-Stephens is much preoccupied with a certain marvellous cook-shop on the Embankment, whose resources he describes, and he adds a queer account of school Speech-days in the City. " The Scholars dispute, some by demonstration, others by dialectics ; some recite enthymemes others Paralogize." Smithfield Market is described with relish, and so is sliding on an early Serpentine : " Some, striding as wide as they may, do slide swiftly." " The only pests of London," he adds, " are the immoderate drinking of fools and the frequency of fires." Later in the book we come to the greatest of such fires described by Pepys, to Delaunay on the seventeenth- century Post Office, to Boswell on the Gordon Riots, and to the British Directory on eighteenth-century trade. Whether all the best things which might have been quoted have found their way into the collection it is not possible to say ; but as it stands the book is a valuable one, and full of delightful interest.
Of books which, like the source book, are perhaps rather attractive than indispensable, one more, at any rate, must be mentioned. " The Educational Company of Ireland " has published A Short History of Ireland,7 by Miss Maxwell, of Trinity, Dublin, and though very simple and brief, it is a book to be read, if merely because there is no other like it. It is a slim volume, but it recounts the history of Ireland right up to the Asquith Home Rule Bill with admirable clearness and quite reasonable impartiality. A better shilling's-worth on Ireland could scarcely be found.
A book of peculiar interest just now, written before the war began, but published since with a special note by Dr. Lodge, of Edinburgh, is a history of Europe since Napoleon,' by Miss Levett, who writes from Oxford. Quite a large portion of the
book deals with Europe since 1870, and nowhere else is an account of the growth of Germany since that time, and of all the changes in the face of the Balkans, so easily accessible for educational purposes. Miss Levett writes clearly and argues with cogency ; her judgment is sane, and the book has been carefully planned. The discussion of the various Constitutions of modern countries, and of the recent changes in Western political theory, is necessarily brief, but it is interesting, and to have such a discussion at all is a great gain. The book is a fairly long one, and only the higher history divisions of an ordinary school will be able to cope with it But it was necessary that such a book should be written, and it only requires to be supplemented by an outline book one-third its size. Such an outline exists ; it goes back to the Goths and Vandals, but the last hundred pages deal with the century since Waterloo. The Main Stream of European History' supplies a real need. Its treatment of everything is cursory, of course, but it fulfils its purpose in giving a simple, clear-headed account of European affairs down to the year 1914, when it seems as if all the " streams " of European history had met at last in the great deep. If any one to whom no form-master is going to introduce this book feels that the outlines of general European history are not quite clear enough in his brain, he would do very well to make acquaintance with the small volume for himself. For the purposes of a train journey worse reading could certainly be found.
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