PEASANT REVOLTS 131 



made for the expansion of England and for the build- 

 ing up of our Empire, but too little attention is given 

 to those dark days of trial and suffering which 

 developed, and made permanent, the indomitable 

 qualities of our race which alone made those achieve- 

 ments possible. 



The history of England has been too often written 

 in the " drum and trumpet " style, and that of the 

 English people too much neglected. Numberless 

 books have been written, and the imagination racked, 

 to idealize, in visionary style, the doubtful deeds of 

 a class who were quite apart from the real life of the 

 nation. Romancists deal with episodes in the careers 

 of that class, adopt artificial standards of virtue and 

 morals, and by their genius cast a glamour of greatness 

 and nobility over deeds which, judged by a righteous 

 standard, are little else than lawless ruffianism. 



Froissart, a Frenchman who came to this country in 

 1394, wrote, in brilliant style, what he called the 

 "Chronicles of England."^ On these, and on similar 

 writings, poets, painters, and romancists have exercised 

 their gifts in so many ways, and so many forms, that a 

 totally false idea is given of what England really was 

 in those days. If some foreigner with facile pen, in 

 the present day, were to describe in attractive style 

 the doings of the turf, the sporting world, of high 

 " Society," of adventurers living on their wits, of 

 reckless speculators and financial gamblers, with an 

 occasional scornful reference to the "unemployed," 

 to Hyde Park riots and meetings in Trafalgar Square, 

 he would hand down to posterity as true an account 

 of the real England as Froissart gives of the England 

 of his day. 



" Chronicles of England," by Sir John Froissart. 



