316. While the foregoing studies are proceeding, though they very well afford a relief to each other, HISTORY may serve as a relaxation, particularly during the study of grammar, which is an undertaking requiring patience and time. Of all history, that of our own country is of the most importance; because, for want of a thorough knowledge of what _has been_, we are, in many cases, at a loss to account for _what is_, and still more at a loss, to be able to show what _ought to be_. The difference between history and romance is this; that that which is narrated in the latter, leaves in the mind nothing which it can apply to present or future circumstances and events; while the former, when it is what it ought to be, leaves the mind stored with arguments for experience, applicable, at all times, to the actual affairs of life. The history of a country ought to show the origin and progress of its institutions, political, civil, and ecclesiastical; it ought to show the effects of those institutions upon the state of the people; it ought to delineate the measures of the government at the several epochs; and, having clearly described the state of the people at the several periods, it ought to show the cause of their freedom, good morals, and happiness; or of their misery, immorality, and slavery; and this, too, by the production of indubitable facts, and of inferences so manifestly fair, as to leave not the smallest doubt upon the mind.
317. Do the histories of England which we have, answer this description? They are very little better than romances. Their contents are generally confined to narrations relating to battles, negociations, intrigues, contests between rival sovereignties, rival nobles, and to the character of kings, queens, mistresses, bishops, ministers, and the like; from scarcely any of which can the reader draw any knowledge which is at all applicable to the circumstances of the present day.
318. Besides this, there is the _falsehood_; and the falsehoods contained in these histories, where shall we find any thing to surpass? Let us take one instance. They all tell us, that William the Conqueror knocked down twenty-six parish churches, and laid waste the parishes in order to make the New Forest; and this in a tract of the very poorest land in England, where the churches must then have stood at about one mile and two hundred yards from each other. The truth is, that all the churches are still standing that were there when William landed, and the whole story is a sheer falsehood from the beginning to the end.