36 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



would not live alway, he asks not to stay, and wishes that the 

 ruthless author of the book and of his misery had been gathered 

 to his fathers before the completion of the task. When that 

 reader grows up he will wax philosophical and say loftily that 

 " dates ai-e for children," — for which the children will not thank 

 him. Because the memory is not to be made a mere ^vare- 

 house, full of chronological material, it by no means follows 

 that dates are useless to the mature student of history. Dates 

 are pivots on which swing human events, and without the 

 establishment of such pivotal points, history loses much of its 

 significance. It makes a serious difference where we place the 

 Reformation and the French Revolution ; the discovery of the 

 St. Lawrence and the Confederation of Canada. Scores of 

 Roman dates do not need particular attention, but it is not only 

 interesting, it is important to place correctly the founding of the 

 capital itself, the overthrow of the Monarchy, the Punic Wars, 

 and the establishment of the Empire. If careless in this, we 

 are liable to make Hannibal appear before Horatius has taken 

 his Tiber bath. And if we play fast and loose with important 

 dates in Grecian history we may get the Trojan War and the 

 Argonautic expedition later than the battle of Marathon, or the 

 administration of Solon. Such a misfit in the development of 

 Greece would be not only mislocation, but dislocation. To 

 make history a mere jumble of dates, to fancy that we are 

 familiar with human affairs because we can repeat chronological 

 tables, is to make a ludicrous mistake. To ignore chronology 

 is to miss the point found in the relation of things, hence is 

 unscientific, and unphilosophical. 



Is it not noteworthy how large a part historical romance 

 has played in literature? And much of it is better worth per- 

 usal than whole tomes of the dry-as-dust variety of chronicles. 

 Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe may be very inaccurate historically, 

 nevertheless it is of great value to the student of history. The 

 same may be said of The Talisman, Anne of Geierstein, 

 Kenilworth and other works. Not many volumes give better 

 ideas of the French Revolution than Dickens' Tale of Two 

 Cities, and Henty's book for boys. The Reign of Terror. 



