HISTORY. 2B5 



long as that from Edward I. to our own time ! In our 

 Scriptures the single Book of Judges gives the history 

 of the Jews for upwards of three centuries ; while of the 

 forty years passed by the same people in the Desert, 

 under conditions difficult to be understood, thirty-eight 

 years are recorded in a few verses only. Such distances 

 are numerous, as are also those strange gaps, either 

 utterly void or filled with fables alone, which some- 

 times occur between two periods of authentic history. 

 In the early British history, for example, ' an age of fable 

 completely separates two ages of truth.' So also in 

 that of Germany. However it may be with the 

 laborious and learned readers of that country, how 

 little do we in England know of its history succeeding 

 the disruption of the Eoman Empire and the era of 

 Charlemagne, while the wars of the Guelfs and Ghibel- 

 lines, in Italy, are the meagre but chief exponents to us 

 of the great Teutonic people at a period still later. 

 Or, recurring once more to the Jewish history, how 

 little is familiarly known of that long period between 

 the later records of the Old Testament and those of 

 the New, though during that period there grew out 

 of the wars of the Maccabees and other events those 

 sects and usages of the Jewish people notably of the 

 Pharisees and Sadducees which form such important 

 elements in the Gospel narratives. 



To gain something like a just estimate of historical 

 time it has been my frequent practice to take some 

 well-known period say, one, two, or three centuries of 

 recent English history and place them in relation to 

 the same length of time in the history of other ages in 



