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of the most accessible sources, giving in each case the name of the publisher and the price.

THE MOST ACCESSIBLE SOURCES

There are various volumes of illustrative material and collections of reprints available for the use of schools. Two books containing extracts from the sources have appeared recently, Selections from the Sources, by Charles Colby, and Sidelights on English History, by Ernest Henderson. The former covers the ground from the earliest time to the middle of the present century; the scope of the latter is limited to the period from the accession of Elizabeth to the accession of Victoria. The different volumes of the series, English History by Contemporary Writers (general editor, F. York Powell), and a similar series in Scottish history, deal with some of the most important periods. Selected numbers of the Translations and Reprints issued by the History Department of the University of Pennsylvania furnish material for special aspects of English history.

Three valuable volumes of documents have been published: Select Charters, by W. Stubbs (Latin); Select Statutes and Constitutional Documents, by R. Prothero; and Documents of the Puritan Rebellion, by S. R. Gardiner. The source book of English history, in course of preparation by Dr. Lee, is chiefly documentary.

Pamphlets dealing with questions of the day are often of great value. Elizabethan and Jacobean Pamphlets and Political Pamphlets (both edited by George Saintsbury) give some of the most important examples of original material of this nature. Political Pamphlets, edited by Pollard, is a book of similar character.

The Parliamentary History and Parliamentary Debates are to be found only in the largest libraries, but the three

volumes of Representative British Orations, edited by C. K. Adams, Political Orations (Camelot Series), and Modern Political Orations, edited by L. Wagner, give some of the noteworthy speeches by the most famous orators.

The Bohn Library contains many of the early chronicles in English translation. Froissart's Chronicles (Lord Berners's translation) have been edited recently by G. C. Macaulay. The Arber English Reprints afford much valuable material, especially for the sixteenth century. Selected numbers of Cassell's National Library and of the Old South Leaflets supply source material in a very cheap form. Diaries, letters, memoirs, and biographies are of especial value. The less formal character and the marked personal element of this class of material render it useful in stimulating the interest of the student. A volume of the Paston Letters, that invaluable record of middle-class life in the fifteenth century, is published in the Bohn Library. There is also a complete edition in three volumes. The Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, edited by T. Carlyle, are of great interest. For the Restoration there is the inimitable Diary of Samuel Pepys, edited by Wheatley. In the Bohn Library are found Asser's Life of Alfred and Hutchinson's Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson. The latter work has been edited recently with much care by C. H. Firth, the editor of the valuable Ludlow Memoirs. For the sixteenth century there are Cardinal Wolsey, by G. Cavendish, and William Roper's Life of Sir Thomas More. In timely recognition of the coming one thousandth anniversary of the death of Alfred two new books have appeared, Alfred in the Chroniclers, by L. Conybeare, and King Alfred, by F. York Powell (English History by Contemporary Writers).

A source library including most of the works enumerated above may be obtained for about forty-five dollars, and will be found fairly adequate for a study of the whole course of English history.

Source-Book of

English History

CHAPTER I-BRITONS AND SAXONS

1. The British Isles in the First Century

Britain: Its boundaries, shape, and surrounding seas

THE

BY COR

NELIUS
TACITUS

(55?-circ.

120), greatest of the Roman

historians.

He married a daughter of Agricola, the real conqueror of Britain. The noble biog

HE geography and inhabitants of Britain, already described by many writers, I will speak of, not that my research and ability may be compared with theirs, but because the country was then for the first time thoroughly subdued. And so matters, which as being still not accurately known my predecessors embellished with their eloquence, raphy which shall now be related on the evidence of facts.

Tacitus wrote of his father

in-law con

tains some

very interesting accounts try where Agricola's most brilliant

of the coun

were

triumphs
achieved.
Then, i.e. in
the time of
Agricola.
"It seems

Britain, the largest of the islands which Roman geography includes, is so situated that it faces Germany on the east, Spain on the west; on the south it is even within sight of Gaul; its northern extremities, which have no shores opposite to them, are beaten by the waves of a vast open sea. The form of the entire country has been compared by Livy and Fabius Rusticus, the most graphic among ancient and modern historians, to an oblong shield or battle-axe. And this, no doubt, is its shape without Caledonia, so that it has become the popular description of the whole island. There is, however, a large and irregular tract of land which juts out from its furthest shores, tapering off in a wedge-like form. Round these coasts of remotest ocean the Roman fleet then for the first time sailed, ascertained that Britain is an island, and simultaneously discovered and conquered what are called the Orcades, islands hitherto unknown. Thule, too, was descried in the distance, which as yet had and Brodbeen hidden by the snows of winter. Those waters, they ribb. say, are sluggish, and yield with difficulty to the oar, and Le. Orkneys.

that Tacitus both Spain and Germany to ex

believed

tend much north than they actually do." Church

further to the

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