itself,
has been so long a dominant force in English letters and philosophy that
a little excess the other way might be decidedly useful as an
alterative. The worst fault of Buckle was the Voltairianism above
referred to, causing or caused by, as is always the case, a deplorable
lack of taste, which is not confined to religious matters.

Edward Augustus Freeman, who was a little younger than Buckle and
survived him for thirty years, had some points in common with the
historian of civilisation, though his education, interests, and tone in
reference to religion were wholly different. Mr. Freeman, who was not at
any public school but was a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, very soon
devoted himself to the study of early English history, and secured a
durable position by his elaborate _History of the Norman Conquest_
(1867-76), which, even though the largest and most important, was only
one among scores of works, ending in an unfinished _History of Sicily_.
He was, when he died in 1892, Regius Professor of Modern History at
Oxford, and he had for many years been very influential in determining
the course of historical study. He was also, for many years of his life,
an active journalist, being especially known as a contributor to the
_Saturday Review_, and he sometimes took a very busy part in politics.
Mr. Freeman was a student of untiring energy, and will always deserve
honourable memory as the first historian who recognised and utilised the
value of architecture in supplying historical documents and
illustrations. His style was at times picturesque but too diffuse, and
disfigured by a habit of allusion as teasing as Macaulay's antithesis or
Kinglake's stock phrases. That he was apt to pronounce very strong
opinions on almost any question with which he dealt, was perhaps a less
drawback to his excellence as a historian than the violently
controversial tone in which he was wont to deal with those who happened
to hold opinions different from his own. Putting defects of manner
aside, there is no question that, for his own special period of English
history (the eleventh and twelfth centuries), Mr. Freeman did more than
any man had done before him, and as much as any man has done for any
other period; while in relation to his further subjects of study, his
work, though less trustworthy, is full of stimulus and of information.

His chief pupil John Richard Green, who was born in 1837 and died of
consumption in 1883, was a nat