it path of historical research to describe the humours
of his parish, the foibles of district visitors and deaconesses, the
charms of the school-girl before she expands her wings in the
drawing-room--above all (and this last was quoted by the author as his
best literary achievement) the joys of 'Children by the sea'. But any
one who turns over the pages of the volume called _Stray Studies from
England and Italy_, where some of these articles are reprinted, will
probably agree with the verdict of the author on their merits. The
subjects are drawn from all ages and all countries. Historical scenes
are peopled with the figures of the past, treated in the magical style
which Green made his own. Dante is seen against the background of
mediaeval Florence; Tintoret represents the life of Venice at its
richest, most glorious time. The old buildings of Lambeth make a noble
setting for the portraits of archbishops, the gentle Warham, the hapless
Cranmer, the tyrannical Laud. Many of these studies are given to the
pleasant border-land between history and geography, and to the
impressions of travel gathered in England or abroad. In one sketch he
puts into a single sentence all the features of an old English town
which his quick eye could note, and from which he could 'work out the
history of the men who lived and died there. In quiet quaintly-named
streets, in the town mead and the market-place, in the lord's mill
beside the stream, in the ruffed and furred brasses of its burghers in
the church, lies the real life of England and Englishmen, the life of
their home and their trade, their ceaseless, sober struggle with
oppression, their steady, unwearied battle for self-government.'

In another he follows the funeral procession of his Angevin hero Henry
II from the stately buildings of Chinon 'by the broad bright Vienne
coming down in great gleaming curves, under the grey escarpments of rock
pierced here and there with the peculiar cellars or cave-dwellings of
the country', to his last resting-place in the vaults of Fontevraud.
Standing beside the monuments on their tombs he notes the striking
contrast of type and character which Henry offers to his son Richard
Coeur-de-Lion. 'Nothing', he says, 'could be less ideal than the narrow
brow, the large prosaic eyes, the coarse full cheeks, the sensual dogged
jaw, that combine somehow into a face far higher than its separate
details, and which is marked by a certain sense of power and comman