Excerpt from Readings in European History, Vol. 1 In preparing my Introduction to tae History of Western Europe I was forced to forego all the amenities of historical narration, except those of clearness and order, in my anxiety to present a tolerably coherent Sketch of the course of events and the development of institutions. In this and the suc ceeding volume I hope that the reader, whether teacher or student, may find some of that life and reality without which historical study must remain arid and well-nigh profitless. I have accordingly made a special effort to select such pas sages as might most readily conciliate the reader's interest. Yet they are not the less useful for being interesting. Indeed, I hope that they may prove to be like that river of which Gregory the Great speaks, which is both Shallow and deep, wherein the lamb may find a footing and the ele phant float at large for there are few among the excerpts that will not repay careful study and give the teacher abun dant opportunity to test his own and his students' insight. The rather long and elaborate bibliographies which follow the several chapters demand a word of explanation. They each fall into three divisions. The first section, A, contains specific references to a collection of forty or fifty standard volumes which should be in any good high-school library. B, Additional readings in Englis/z, is especially designed for those who have a good college library at their disposal. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.