les of the seventh century." When his
attention had been called to a discussion in the weekly journals
about Shelley's first wife he wrote to me, "Why will they worry us
with this _Harrietfrage_? You and I have quite enough to do with
Helen, and Theodora, and Mary Stuart." So in addressing Somersetshire
rustics during his election campaign in 1868, he could not help on one
occasion referring to Ptolemy Euergetes, and on another launching
out into an eloquent description of the Landesgemeinde of Uri.

Industry came naturally to Freeman, because he was fond of his own
studies and did not think of his work as task work. The joy in reading
and writing about bygone times sprang from the intensity with which he
realised them. He had no geographical imagination, finding no more
pleasure in books of travel than in dramatic poetry. But he loved to
dwell in the past, and seemed to see and feel and make himself a part
of the events he described. Next to their worth as statements of
carefully investigated facts, the chief merit of his books lies in the
sense of reality which fills them. The politics of Corinth or Sicyon,
the contest of William the Red with St. Anselm, interested him as
keenly as a general election in which he was himself a candidate.
Looking upon current events with an historian's eye, he was fond, on
the other hand, of illustrating features of Roman history from
incidents he had witnessed when taking part in local government as a
magistrate; and in describing the relations of Hermocrates and
Athenagoras at Syracuse he drew upon observations which he had made in
watching the discussions of the Hebdomadal Council at Oxford. This
power of realising the politics of ancient or mediaeval times was
especially useful to him as a writer, because without it his
minuteness might have verged on prolixity, seeing that he cared
exclusively for the political part of history. It was one of the
points in which he rose superior to most of those German students with
whom it is natural to compare him. Many of them have equalled him in
industry and diligence; some have surpassed him in the ingenuity which
they bring to bear upon obscure problems; but few of them have shown
the same gift for understanding what the political life of remote
times really was. Like Gibbon, Freeman was not a mere student, but
also a man with opportunities of mixing in affairs, accustomed to bear
his share in the world's work, and so better able than the mer