Contents -- Inaugural Lecture On the Study of History -- I. Beginning of the Modern State. -- II. The New World -- III. The Renaissance -- IV. Luther -- V. The Counter-Reformation -- VI. Calvin and Henry VIII -- VII. Philip II, Mary Stuart, and Elizabeth -- VIII. The Huguenots and the League -- IX. Henry the Fourth and Richelieu -- X. The Thirty Years' War -- XI. The Puritan Revolution -- XII. The Rise of the Whigs -- XIII. The English Revolution -- XIV. Lewis the Fourteenth -- XV. The War of the Spanish Succession -- XVI. The Hanoverian Settlement -- XVII. Peter the Great and the Rise of Prussia -- XVIII. Frederic the Great -- XIX. The American Revolution.