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- Lectures on Modern History_3.pdf
It was announced in February 1895 that John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, first Baron Acton, had been appointed to the Chair of Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge in succession to the late Sir John Seeley, who had held the office for upwards of a quarter of a century. Of the achievements of Acton’s six years’ tenure of the post, the present volume, together with that forthcoming on the French Revolution, will form the chief, though not the only monument. To those who found in the teaching of the late Professor inspiration as well as knowledge, the Lectures now published will serve at once to heighten and to relieve the sense, still so fresh, of personal loss. “To the many friends and scholars who had known him in other spheres or for a longer space, they will be a fitting memorial of Acton’s greatness in the realm of his unchallenged pre-eminence. Of all the previous occupants of the chair none is to be named with Acton for a career unique in interest, variety, and pathos.
Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, 1834–1902) was a leading 19th-century historian in the classical-liberal tradition. He watched the growth of the United States with great interest, and lamented the decline of states’ rights and federalism. While he was a prolific writer and speaker, his great work, a history of freedom, was never completed.
1921 Macmillan and co, St. Martin’s Street, London. 1921
