Χ.] THE PRESENT. 275 best to reconcile with more potent ideas and influences more likely to be permanent. France to some extent represents democracy, to a far greater extent she still, as ever, represents the old claim to arbitrate in Europe. Prussia or Germany, in the same way, represents the force which, relying on the strength of nationality, has for the moment .made her the leading power in Christendom. For the perishing remnants of Turkey a faint plea of territorial possession has gone forth, but the conscience of friends and the determination of foes have alike repudiated it as an excuse for misgovernment and palliation of tyranny. There is no idea, no such justification for that curse of Christendom. Turkey means nothing, represents nothing but butchery, barbarism, and the vilest slavery. What does England represent? What is she to represent in the future ? What would we wish for her but clear-sighted justice and living sympathy with what is good and sound in the progress of the world ? Having achieved that sentiment, I must now slip into bathos. I have preferred medieval history to modern in my own teaching, partly because I believe the study of rights is more wholesome as an educational study than that of the balance of forces, partly because I think it a safer study altogether than the theoretical study of political ideas. Political ideas are apt to lay. hold on the fancy and on the affections, and to make men partisans before they are at all competent to weigh the merits of parties, to adjust the balance between order and progress, between historical right and historical growth : and there is in the study of them very little training. Educationally, I prefer the first division.may also be turned towards it by certain legal tendencies and documentary tastes of my own. I am only justifying myself, not laying down a law for others. There are other sorts of studies here besides law and history. I can conceive the man who has spent his terms here on philosophy taking more τ 2