Page:Historical Lectures and Addresses.djvu/12

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viii
PREFACE

Grosseteste and his Times, the English Church in the Time of Elizabeth and the Study of a Country are printed from the reporter's notes as they were delivered. Though naturally less finished productions than the others, they give a very good idea of Dr. Creighton's manner of popular lecturing. His inaugural lecture as Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History, which is here printed for the first time, shows what history meant to him, and what he tried to make it mean to others. To him its living interest lay in the fact that he saw everywhere when he looked into the past "the working of great elemental forces, which are common to human society at all times". What he cared to note in every age, whether past or present, was "the thing that was accomplished, the ideas which clothed themselves with power".

LOUISE CREIGHTON.