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IN

GENERAL HISTORY.

BY

MARY D. SHELDON,

FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN WELLESLEY COLLEge, and
TEACHER OF HISTORY IN OSWEGO NORMAL

SCHOOL, N.Y.

Student's Edition.

"Human affairs are neither to be laughed at nor wept over, but

to be understood."

BOSTON:

D. C. HEATH & COMPANY.

1891.

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Barnes, Mrs. Many Downing (Chardon)

COPYRIGHT, SEPT. 30, 1885,

BY MARY SHELDON BARNES.

TYPOGRAPHY BY
J. S. CUSHING & Co.,
BOSTON.

PRESSWORK BY
BERWICK & SMITH,

BOSTON.

ΤΟ

MY PUPILS AT WELLESLEY COLLEGE

AND AT OSWEGO,

TO WHOSE WARM ENCOURAGEMENT AND SYM

PATHY THIS BOOK IS LARGELY DUE, IT

IS MOST LOVINGLY DEDICATED.

MARY D. SHELDON.

THE MAKING OF HISTORY.

TO THE STUDENT:

How, then, is history made? If a man wanted to write the history of England, and no one before had ever attempted it, so that no books existed from which he could read it, how would he go to work to find it out? He would go to the "original sources," as people say; that is, he would go to London, to Oxford and Cambridge, and hunt through offices, libraries, and museums for all the old records, despatches, and letters, for reports of parliamentary debates, for the manuscripts of the old chroniclers, for copies of treaties and laws; and from all these things he could find what had been the government of England, what powers she had, from time to time, given to her king, her parliament, and the general mass of her people; what classes of society were recognized by law, and how each class was regarded by the government and by other classes. He would discover what affairs of national importance had happened, what had been the wars of England, and what she had deemed worth fighting for; what nations she had been connected with, and in what relations. And as he went along, he would note down all these things as material for his history.

Further than this, he would travel England over from end to end, and see what sorts of buildings these English had left behind them at different times; he would examine all the old cathedrals, castles, and town walls, study the tombs in churches and graveyards, look out for all the old bits of painting or

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