INTRODUCTION In THE present work has grown out of a practical need; and it is hoped that it will meet one. teaching History, as has long been recognised, even the younger, let alone the older hearers, ought to be made acquainted with some of the original documents in which the causes, motives, or results of great historical movements have been crystallised, at least partially. We say partially; for it would be a grave error to consider any one historic document as having been penned with perfect sincerity. In but too many documents the more important causes and motives have found no explicit expression. Yet, with all the shortcomings of historic documents, there still remains in many of them something of that "atmosphere" which was perhaps the real the real moving force of the events or institutions recorded in the documents. The teacher, by repeated study of the document itself, and by the auxiliary reading of reference books such as are here indicated for every one document may, and we venture to submit ought, to acquire that sense of historic "atmosphere" without which his teaching will remain dry and inefficient. For this reason, the documents have been left in their original languages; that is, in Latin, Greek, English, French, German, and Dutch; the documents in German and Dutch being made more accessible by English translations. It could not reasonably be supposed that a purchaser of a book like the present was unacquainted with the two classical languages or with French. Had all the documents been given in English, not only would the task of the compiler have been infinitely greater, but he would also |