  Edited by With Maps. The most important and the most difficult point in historical teaching is to awaken a real interest in the minds of beginners. For this purpose concise handbooks are seldom useful. General sketches, however accurate in their outlines of political or constitutional development, and however well adapted to dispel false ideas, still do not make history a living thing to the young. They are most valuable as maps on which to trace the route beforehand and show its direction, but they will seldom allure any one to take a walk. The object of this series of Historical Biographies is to try and select from English History a few men whose lives were lived in stirring times. The intention is to treat their lives and times in some little detail, and to group round them the most distinctive features of the periods before and after those in which they lived. It is hoped that in this way interest may be awakened without any sacrifice of accuracy, and that personal sympathies may be kindled without forgetfulness of the principles involved. It may be added that around the lives of individuals it will be possible to bring together facts of social life in a clearer way, and to reproduce a more vivid picture of particular times than is possible in a historical handbook. By reading short biographies a few clear ideas may be formed in the pupil's mind, which may stimulate to further reading. A vivid impression of one period, however short, will carry the pupil onward and give more general histories an interest in their turn. Something, at least, will be gained if the pupil realises that men in past times lived and moved in the same sort of way as they do at present. The series contains the following Biographies:
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