Carlyle, by his perpetual insistence, in the Frederick, on Jenkins's ears, had anticipated Seeley in giving due importance to the expansion of England. We felt that Seeley had succeeded in what he had set out to do, in giving an epic unity to the last two centuries of English history. Surely since Sieyès no pamphlet—for it was little more in point of size—ever had such immediate and wide-reaching influence. Our Imperialism of today is the combined work of Beaconsfield and of Seeley, a curious couple of collaborators. Seeley's K.C.M.G. was a fit reward for services done to the empire.
Seeley's work as historian and as teacher of history at Cambridge was diplomatic in a double sense. He aimed at giving a more definite conception to the meaning of history by confining it to the study of the State and its development. Your development of literature and science, your Culturgeschichte, your social position of the people, were not for him as historian. Unless they got into State documents they had nothing to do with history as he conceived it, following in this the school of Ranke. For his period, and for his purposes, the documents that were of chief interest and importance were those of the diplomatists. It is to be hoped that sufficient remains of the work on which he was engaged during the past few
