o better than quote the words of a master of that
subject, who was also one of his oldest friends. Mr. George T. Clark
says:--

He was an accurate observer, not only of the broad features of a
country but of its ancient roads and earthworks, its prehistoric
monuments, and its earlier and especially its ecclesiastical
buildings. No man was better versed in the distinctive styles of
Christian architecture, or had a better general knowledge of the
earthworks from the study of which he might hope to correct or
corroborate any written records, and by the aid of which he often
infused life and reality into otherwise obscure narrations.... He
visited every spot upon which the Conqueror is recorded to have
set his foot, compared many of the strongholds of his followers
with those they left behind them in Normandy, and studied the
evidence of Domesday for their character and possessions. When
writing upon Rufus he spent some time in examining the afforested
district of the New Forest, and sought for traces of the villages
and churches said to have been depopulated or destroyed. And for
us archaeologists he did more than this. When he attended a
provincial congress and had listened to the description of some
local antiquity, some mound, or divisional earthbank, or
semi-Saxon church, he at once strove to show the general evidence
to be deduced from them, and how it bore upon the boundaries or
formation of some Celtic or Saxon province or diocese, if not upon
the general history of the kingdom itself.... He thus did much to
elevate the pursuits of the archaeologist, and to show the relation
they bore to the far superior labours of the historian.

Freeman was always at his best when in the field. It was then that
the full force of his personality came into play: his sturdy
upright figure, sharp-cut features, flowing beard, well-modulated
voice, clear enunciation, and fluent and incisive speech. None who
have heard him hold forth from the steps of some churchyard cross,
or from the top stone of some half-demolished cromlech, can ever
cease to have a vivid recollection of both the orator and his
theme.

Freeman took endless pains to master the topography of any place he
had to deal with. When at work in his later years on Sicilian history
he visited, and he has minutely described, the site of nearly every
spot in that island where a battle or a siege took place in anc