his latter was the
inevitable result of his method of studying the past along the lines
of philology and ethnology, and has carried him to extremes which
taken by anybody else he would have been quick to see.

An examination of Freeman's minor contributions to the reviews--such
essays, sketches, and discussions as he did not think important enough
to republish in book form--is indicative of his interest in current
affairs. They made little draft on his learning, yet the point of view
is generally the result of his learning. He believed, for instance,
that a sound judgment on the Franco-Prussian War could not be found
save in the light of history. "The present war," he wrote to the Pall
Mall Gazette, "has largely risen out of a misconception of history,
out of the dream of a frontier of the Rhine which never existed. The
war on the part of Germany is in truth a vigorous setting forth of the
historical truth that the Rhine is, and always has been, a German
river."

Freeman was still busy with his 'History of Sicily' from the earliest
times, and had just finished the preface to the third volume, when he
died at Alicante in Spain, March 16th, 1892. Since his death a fourth
volume, prepared from his notes, has been published.

But one biography of Freeman has yet appeared, 'The Life and Letters
of Edward A. Freeman,' by W. R. W. Stephens, 2 vols., 1895.

[Signature: John Bach McMartin]

THE ALTERED ASPECTS OF ROME

From 'Historical Essays of Edward A. Freeman,' Third Series. London,
Macmillan & Co., 1879

The two great phenomena, then, of the general appearance of Rome, are
the utter abandonment of so large a part of the ancient city and the
general lack of buildings of the Middle Ages. Both of these facts are
fully accounted for by the peculiar history of Rome. It may be that
the sack and fire under Robert Wiscard--a sack and fire done in the
cause of a pope in warfare against an emperor--was the immediate cause
of the desolation of a large part of Rome; but if so, the destruction
which was then wrought only gave a helping hand to causes which were
at work both before and after. A city could not do otherwise than
dwindle away, in which neither emperor nor pope nor commonwealth could
keep up any lasting form of regular government; a city which had no
resources of its own, and which lived, as a place of pilgrimage, on
the shadow of its own greatness. Another idea which is sur