cessful in parliamentary life, I may say that the election
not only came to him unsought, but that he recognized that he was too
old to adapt himself to the atmosphere of the House of Commons; he
accepted the position in the belief which was pressed upon him by many
friends that he could in Parliament be useful to the University.

Within less than three years have we commemorated in this hall three
great English historians--Stubbs, Gardiner, and Lecky. The one we honor
to-day was the most popular of the three. Not studied so much at the
seats of learning, he is better known to journalists, to statesmen, to
men of affairs, in short to general readers. Even our Society made him
an honorary member fourteen years before it so honored Gardiner,
although Gardiner was the older man and two volumes of his history had
been published before Lecky's Rationalism, and two volumes more in the
same year as the Morals. One year after it was published, Rationalism
went into a third edition. Gardiner's first volumes sold one hundred and
forty copies. It must, however, be stated that the Society recognized
Gardiner's work as early as 1874 by electing him a corresponding member.

It is difficult to guess how long Lecky will be read. His popularity is
distinct. He was the rare combination of a scholar and a man of the
world, made so by his own peculiar talent and by lucky opportunities. He
was not obliged to earn his living. In early life, by intimate personal
intercourse, he drew intellectual inspiration from Dean Milman, and
later he learned practical politics through his friendship with Lord
Russell. He knew well Herbert Spencer, Huxley, and Tyndall. In private
conversation he was a very interesting man. His discourse ran on books
and on men; he turned from one to the other and mixed up the two with a
ready familiarity. He went much into London society, and though entirely
serious and without having, so far as I know, a gleam of humor, he was a
fluent and entertaining talker.

Mr. Lecky was vitally interested in the affairs of this country, and
sympathized with the North during our Civil War. He once wrote to me: "I
am old enough to remember vividly your great war, and was then much with
an American friend--a very clever lawyer named George Bemis--whom I came
to know very well at Rome.... I was myself a decided Northerner, but the
'right of revolution' was always rather a stumbling block." Talking with
Mr. Lecky in 1895, not long after