No. 23. [From The Morning Post, October 2, 1912.] 



HISTORY IN HANDY VOLUMES 



THE different tastes in the matter of reading revealed 

 by your correspondents are very interesting. May I add 

 my contribution ? I never was much either of a reader or 

 writer. I always preferred original observation and experi- 

 ment. But there is much to be learned by the observer 

 and experimenter from history, and history must be read. 

 History is the more authentic the more nearly it is con- 

 temporaneous and the more closely connected is the author 

 with the events which he chronicles. This reflection was 

 borne in upon me in a not unpleasant way many years ago 

 on a tour in Norway. I think it was in Odde that I had 

 to pass a day of such continuous and heavy rain that ex- 

 cursions were out of the question. In the reading-room of 

 the hotel I found a number of the early volumes of the 

 Illustrated London News, and they covered the duration of 

 the Crimean War. At that date the telegraph was hardly 

 available for correspondents, and as the mail was weekly, 

 a weekly print with a good correspondent was as good as 

 a daily. I never spent a more agreeable or instructive day 

 in my life. Each week I learned what had passed in the 

 previous \veek, and, what was even more interesting, what 

 was expected to happen in the next, and the following week 

 was full of surprises and revelations. I advise everyone who 

 has access to these volumes to repeat my experiment. 



Such volumes, however, cannot be carried in the railway 

 carriage, and the Crimean War is a thing belonging entirely 

 to the past. But there is history which is fortunately written 

 in more handy volumes, which goes even much further back 

 than the Crimean War and is yet of profound influence on 



