You must pardon me if my observations this afternoon betray, in a more marked degree than you may think appropriate in the President of your Society, the diffidence which is born of surprise. For it was a genuine surprise to me when in the course of last summer the Council of the Royal Historical Society did me the honour of nominating me their President—a nomination which you have now been good enough to confirm—in the place of a predecessor of high distinction. I was aware that before him this office had been filled by men of eminence either as historians or among those who have signally contributed to the making of history. The earliest name on the list is, I believe, that of an English classic whose venerated figure stands on a pillar ‘wrought full sternely’ among those consecrate in the House of Fame to illustrious historians, near the place of honour belonging to Gibbon himself. For, unlike to one another as he and Grote were from most points of view of philosophical thought, of political principle, and of literary taste, more than one analogy is traceable between the growths of their respective masterpieces. Each was the work of its author's mature manhood; each was carried out consecutively, with that consciousness of the goal in view which proportionates effort to progress, and within a limit of years far outside of which unity of execution is virtually impossible. Thus, though in both instances the historian's conception of his theme was not only vast and comprehensive, but confessedly grew under his hands into its ultimate shape, the complete edifice stood square to the elements, and in the mortar ‘which made the building sure’ the ingredient of civic experience had not been omitted.