It has been the laudable and most natural custom of my predecessors in this Presidential Chair to deliver as their swan-song of farewell to the Society a prophecy or forecast of the progress of Historical Study in the future, setting forth the many fields of historical knowledge that remain yet unconquered, and describing how best the attack on the tcrra incognita may be conducted. This is a worthy ambition: and no doubt such addresses may, from time to time, have set some newly-joined member of the Society on the track of some line of research where his energies have been well employed. But being myself too modest to assume for your benefit the rôle of prophet and guide, I have thought it worth while to-day, for the sake of variety, to ask you to look backward rather than forward, and to contemplate history as it presented itself to our ancestors, rather than as it will present itself to our successors.