TWO LECTURES WITH AN APPENDIX BY EDWARD A. FREEMAN, D.C.L., LL.D. REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD     London MACMILLAN AND CO. 1886 [ All rights reserved ] Oxford PRINTED BY HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY...

These two lectures were given quite independently, the former to the Students’ Association at Edinburgh on December 22nd, 1885, and the latter as a public lecture in the University of Oxford on Washington’s birthday, February 22nd, 1886. As they were written for two different audiences, and as one leading idea ran through both, there was naturally a good deal of repetition, sometimes even to the very words. This I have, in revising them for the press, done my best to get rid of. They appear now

The day on which we are met is the day that is honoured by a mighty commonwealth of our own blood and speech as the birthday of its founder. It is a day of rejoicing in every home throughout the vastest of English lands, the land where the tongue and laws of England have won for themselves a wider dominion than the Empire of Justinian or of Trajan. From the western brink of that giant stream of Ocean of which the Greek of old heard with wonder to the eastern brink of that further Ocean of which

Cover created by Transcriber and placed in the Public Domain. Table of Contents added by Transcriber. Footnotes have been moved to the ends of the Lectures referencing them. Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed. Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained. Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained. Reading devices that cannot displ