THE COLLEGIATE, SCHOOL, AND FAMILY HISTORY OF ENGLAND, FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD, TO THE Eleventh Kear of the Reign of Queen Victoria ; CONTAINING A NARRATIVE OF CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS, AND EXHIBITING A VIEW OF THE RELIGION, GOVERNMENT AND LAWS, LITERATURE, ARTS, COMMERCE, OF ENGLISH HISTORY. BY EDWARD FARR, F.S. A., AUTHOR OF "A Continuation of Hume and Smollett,” “ Ancient History, from various Authentic Sources “The People of China, " etc. etc. LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND DONGMANS. 1848. PRE FACE. It is generally admitted that a History of England for Schools and Families is a desideratum in literature: that while there are many Histories published for the use of young people, there is not one on which they can depend for sound information. Those Histories, moreover, for the most part are only outlines, or mere narratives of civil and military transactions. Nor are these events recorded truthfully : errors particularly abound in the History commonly used in schools, and which professes to be an improved cdition of the work originally written by Goldsmith. But even if this History were perfect in what it records, at the present day something more is required than the dry and often revolting details of war and bloodshed. Such details should never form the distinctive feature of a History for youth. Ambition begets ambition. The war-narrative of Homer inflamed the ambition of Alexander; and the pages of Xenophon in a great measure formed the warlike and dangerous character of Napoleon. A notice of the wars in which England has been engaged should not be omitted, but they should not form the all-absorbing topics of the pages of English History. A nation's true greatness does not consist in the victories gained by its armies: they exhibit only |