lutely unknown. It was a London curate, to whose name there were no stars in the Oxford kalendar, whom I learned to look on in 1862, and whom the world in general learned to look on a good many years later, as one of the masters of historical writing.

was naturally more taking than the "Angevin Kings" would have been; but no subject could have better brought out all the sides of the writer. "The Making of England" has many and great merits, and it proved Green to be what some had always known him to be, but which Green's appearances at our local society some, not unnaturally, could hardly bring in Somerset made him well known to themselves to think him, a man of real many in that district before his general historical research, and not the mere reputation began. At the meeting which teller of a pretty story. Yet I caunot was held at Wells in 1863, when Profes- help thinking that the kind of research sor Willis expounded the cathedral a sec- needed for the "Angevin Kings" would ond time, Green first made acquaintance have better suited Green's genius than with Dr. Stubbs, not yet professor and that which he needed for the "Making." only beginning to be known. Both of I may put my own feeling into this them were guests of mine, as Green was shape: I was surprised to find "The often afterwards. Green also showed Making of England" so good as it was; I himself at several meetings of the Archæ- should have been surprised if a "Hisological Institute. He took a prominent tory of the Angevin Kings" by the same part in that which was held in London in hand had fallen short of the highest pos1866, and his striking paper on the part sible standard of merit. His wonderful taken by London in the election of Ste- geographical instinct, his deep sympathy phen was published in the volume called with religious movements in whatever di"Old London," along with a worthy fel-rection, stood him in good stead in the low in Mr. Clark's discourse on the " Making." But the "Making," as dealing Tower. Dr. Guest also gave his dis- with the beginnings of a people, and of course on the campaign of Aulus Plau a people in a special position which needs tius, fixing the origin of London. Green to be contrasted with the position of its was also at the meeting at Bury Saint fellows, called for powers in which Green Edmunds. I was not myself there, but was less strong than in some others. His I heard much, both at the time and after, grasp of cecumenical history strengthened of his discourse, on the relations between and widened as he went on; but I should the town and the abbey, a subject thor- at no time call it one of his strong points. oughly to his heart, and which appeared In language he was decidedly weak; in afterwards under the name of " Abbot and the early history of institutions, the lore Town." And I specially remember hear of a Waitz and a Maine, though much ing of another discourse of his at which stronger, he was not at his strongest. I also I was not present. This was a was, as I just now said, surprised at the speech at a local meeting at Lincoln, way in which many of these difficulties made, I believe, altogether without prep were overcome, surprised to find "The aration, on the battle fought under the Making of England," not only so bril walls of that city in Stephen's day. By liant - that one knew that it must bethose who heard it it was spoken of as but so generally critical and trustworthy one of the most brilliant of his efforts, and as it certainly is. Still I think that he I can well understand the thrilling life was better fitted to deal with a somewhat which he would throw into his picture of later time than with the very first days of one of the most stirring battles in history. a people. The Angevin kings made a The two discourses on the history of subject which would have exactly suited Stephen would doubtless, if Green had him, one which would have drawn forth ever finished his "History of the An- all his powers in the highest degree. gevin Kings," have been worked into None is fuller of combined interest, persome of the noblest of its pages. Dur- sonal, political, ecclesiastical. None is ing all the time of which I speak, he richer in picturesque incident. The dowas musing over that design, and actu- minion which spread from the Orkneys ally writing detached passages. Some to the Pyrenees, the warfare which of these I remember his reading to me, spread from Ireland to Palestine, would specially a most vivid picture of the loss have called forth many a brilliant appli. of the "White Ship." I could almost cation of his geographical and topographwish that he had stuck to that design, ical powers. Of many of the great men and had not taken to anything else. To of that great time Dr. Stubbs has paint. the world in general his "Short History "ed the pictures with a master's hand; but

I could not exactly make out; though he had read a good deal of French, he could not speak it or understand it when spok en; and he never became a fluent speaker either in that or in any other foreign language. However he did come, but I had to speak for him for some while.* How well I remember taking him in the evening to Saint Stephen's, and not letting him look up till I had brought him to the spot where once lay William the Great. That was indeed a good beginning of our common journeyings. I took him another day to Bayeux with its tapestry and its cathedral full of memories of Odo and Henry the First. Another day we studied the fight of Val-ès-dunes on the spot; another took us to Seez and Alençon, to

he has not painted the pictures of all, and he has not told the story of any. The king who restored order after the anarchy; the king who, born in his own Oxford, yet assuredly not of Oxford or of England, went forth to amaze the world at Acre, at Ragusa, and at Chaluz; the king who, in losing Normandy, again made England; the earls and bishops who surrounded them; the wars, the councils, the charters granted and broken, all these would have made a story after Green's own heart, and to which no man could have done better justice than he could. Above all, we might have had the tale of the zealous chancellor unluckily turned into a zealous archbishop, told, as it has not been told yet, with combined knowledge, sympathy, and love of truth.* us then mainly the scene of the fierce And the hand that told the tale of Oxford and Bristol and Saint Edmundsbury might also have told some stirring pages of the tale of Saint Alban's with the insight of true genius, the light of true descriptive power, and yet without the perversion of the smallest fact or the falsification of the smallest reference.

vengeance taken by the tanner's grandson. Almost more memorable was a day on which we went to Brionne, and thence over the wooded hill to Bec Herlouin. Then we went to Rouen, and to the Conqueror's death-place at Saint Gervase, to Château Gaillard whence, it will be remembered, he saw Runnymede- to LiThe contemplated history of the Ange- ons-le-forêt, death-place of Henry the vin kings has perhaps dwelled specially First, to Mortemer, memorable in the in my mind on account of the journeys Conqueror's wars; to Gournay, Saint Ger which Green and I took together in some mer, and back through Picardy by the of the lands which would have held an accustomed stopping-places of Amiens important place in his story. I had al- and Abbeville -new to him, but not to ready had the advantage of visiting with me - together with what was then new to him some of the places in England which both of us, the Conqueror's starting-place were of most importance in my own. I at Saint Valery. This journey had perwas with him at Stamfordbridge, at Wal-haps more directly to do with my studies tham, on the hill of Senlac itself, and I than with his. Our ramble of the next need hardly say that I gained much from year was of even greater interest, as his companionship. But I have even bringing us across many of the places more pleasant memories of the days when which to him were special places of pilI first introduced him to the continent of grimage. This time, after one day's stay Europe, when I went with him to many at Rouen, we went to Paris, a city more places which fill a place in my own story, to his taste than to mine. There we and which would have filled a place in his plunged, so to speak, into the thick of his also. Neither he nor I began Continental story, taking in not a little that belonged travel very early in life; he never set foot to mine too. Then I first saw, in his out of England till May, 1867, when he company, Chartres, to him largely the was in his thirtieth year. He was to have city of endless counts, Thibauds and Stejoined me at Cherbourg, but by an acci dent he did not come till a few days later, when I was at Caen. How he got there

• I cannot help adding a grotesque story which may possibly have gained a little in the hands of the teller. In Green's hands at least such stories never lost. He was asked to give a lecture at some place in Kent, I think at Herne Bay. He chose for his subject the loca! hero of Canterbury. He went through the whole story of Thomas, from the birth to the martyrdom, but he spoke of him throughout by his true historical name of "Thomas of London.' When he had done, the clergyman of the parish came up and asked him: "But I thought you were going to tell us something about Thomas à Becket."

a

* Afterwards he had sometimes to speak for himself. I remember a Norman priest getting into somewhat of theological dispute with him. The Norman maintained that Green was "Méthodiste Evangélique." Green said he was not, but that he was a clergyman of the Church of England. But the priest insisted that the Church of England was "Méthodiste Evangélique." He had been to Paris at the Great Exhibition; he had there seen an English church, and it was "Méthodiste Evangélique." Green had not mastered French enough to draw minute distinctions on points of divinity and Church government, and the cure was left in his belief. Perhaps I ought to have given him more help than I did; possibly I paid the penalty when the harder task was laid on me on the slope of the Larissa of Argos - of explaining the peculiarities of the Society of Friends in Greek.

phens and the noblest city of northern Gaul, Le Mans itself, on its hill above its river. Here, in the birthplace of Henry the Second, the historian of the Angevin kings was indeed at home. So he was in black Angers, cradle of the house, at Tours, in the walk by the river-side to Marmoutiers, and perhaps most of all on another day by the rushing Loire, which took us from Tours, by Chinon and Fontevrault, to Saumur. Let no one think that at Chinon we forgot the Maid; but in Green's company the first memory was that of the "conquered king," who turned away thither to die when the name of John was among the traitors, and when his own Le Mans was in the hands of the French enemy. The sight of Fontevrault stirred him up to not a few thoughts. There were his own Angevins in their own place, and the sight of them led to not a few gibes, in speech and print, at the folly of those who would carry off counts and countesses of Anjou from their native home, because forsooth they chanced to be also kings and queens of England. Here Green was on his special ground; in the rest of the journey, at Dol and Dinan, Saint Michael's Mount and Avranches, Mortain and Domfront, Caen once more, I was rather on mine. But in either case it was a wonderful process to go through such places with such a man, each of us studying for his own ends, ends which had so much in common. It was mutual learning and teaching at every step; and I am sure that not a few passages of my own history have gained not a little from being designed-in some cases for being actually written in the course of journeys in Green's company to the places of which they speak.

only admire in a very blind way. A country parish I could have understood; Saint Philip's Stepney was ever mysterious. But I know that it was hard and zealous discharge of duty which did much to break him down, and to make the difference between my Norman and Angevin companion of 1867 and 1868, and my Italian companion of 1871. I am not sure whether he had at that time given up his parish; but I think he must have done so. Certainly his visits to Italy for the sake of health had begun. He had spent the winter of 1870-1871 on the Riviera, and in 1871 I left him at Pisa to go again on the same errand. I remember his vivid description of his return to England early in 1871. He then saw a bit of history with his own eyes. The siege of Paris, then in the hands of the Commune, was going on. There was of course no going through the leaguered city; but the his torian of so much warfare-though in one way of as little as he could — came in for a kind of Pisgah view of the bombardment.

A first journey to Italy is a wonderful thing, and it is a great thing to make it in company with such a man as Green. Yet it had not quite the freshness of our Norman and Angevin journeys. Perhaps it was partly because then I was leading him, while in Italy he was leading me. The special charm of the earlier journeys was to see the effects of such objects as we saw, when seen for the first time by a man of Green's understanding and knowledge. This charm was of course lacking in a land which he knew already and in which he taught me. Again, though in Italy we were studying and learning at every step, we were not, as we had been But, if I introduced Green to the con- in Normandy, Maine, and Anjou, studytinent of Europe, he fully repaid the ser- ing and learning for what has been the vice by introducing me to the southern main work of my life, and what I had parts of that continent. If in 1867 I took hoped would be the main work of his. him to Normandy, in 1871 he took me to Still it was delightful to be with him; it Italy. By that time he was not quite the was delightful to listen and to learn from man he had been. When he was with me him. And none the less so because our in Normandy and Anjou, he was still a tastes and objects were not exactly the London clergyman in active work. To same. It is needless to say what were some who have written of him this was Green's primary objects in Italy. Here his primary aspect; to me of course it is was municipality on its grandest scale. secondary. But he used to tell me a Never was he so thoroughly at home as in great deal about his clerical work, espe- the stately town-house of an Italian city. cially his labors in the time of the cholera. But he had a mind for other things also. I spent some days with him at his Step- If I had not learned it in any other way, ney vicarage, and so saw some parts of I should have learned from him that Ven. London which I otherwise never might ice is essentially a city of the Eastern have seen. But his whole life there, and Empire. And it was something to go everything to do with it, was so unlike with him to Murano and Torcello, to anything to which I was used that I could | Verona and Padua; but above all, one of

the great days of one's life was the day when I first went to Ravenna with such a companion. There he was wholly within my range of subjects, with little that bore on his own. But he entered into everything with all the fulness of his powers. Before all things, it was the Arian side of Ravenna that attracted him. And well I remember how we stood side by side before the tomb of Henry the Seventh in the Holy Field of Pisa.

rather than Teutonic. His delight in Italy led him rather to despise English things and Teutonic things in general. Though he came back to English studies, I doubt whether he ever, after crossing the Alps, gave his heart and soul to them in the way that he did when he talked about Dunstan at Wellington. If he looked on me as a wanderer from the specially Mercian fold, I came to look on him as a wanderer from the wider English and from the still wider Teutonic fold. Yet it so happened that I saw some of the most famous German cities for the first time in his company. On our way to Italy in 1871 we passed by- I trace them in an order opposite to that of our course

Agrippina itself. But I doubt if any of them stirred him up so much as Italian cities of less fame. In northern Germany I never was with him. A journey which we once planned to the oldest England never came off.

Green's visits to Italy had a great effect on his mind in several ways. In some ways they opened and enlarged his thoughts. It was perhaps part of his anti-academical feeling at Oxford that for a long time he seemed to have a kind of dislike to what are vulgarly called "clas-Innsbrück, Würzburg, Mainz, Colonia sical" studies. Of course any man who takes an enlarged view of things will naturally kick at the absurd isolation in which scholars of the narrower kind would shut up certain arbitrarily chosen centuries of the long and still unfinished history of Greece and Italy. Green had too strong I have referred to his contributions to and too clear a mind to be likely to run the Saturday Review. I forget exactly after this kind of folly. It was perhaps when they began or when they ended: an understanding of its folly which sent they were certainly in full force at the him too far the other way. At one time time of our journey in 1868. He used to he certainly undervalued those periods of say merrily that he wrote three kinds of Greek and Italian history and literature, articles in that paper. There were hisperiods than which none can be more im- torical and topographical articles, which portant if they are only put in their true he said were attributed to me. There relation to other periods. And I am not were light social articles, which he said sure that he ever valued them quite so were attributed to a lady of high rank who much as they deserve. But his Italian was believed to write in the paper. There sojourns did him good in this respect; were articles on matters in the eastern they helped to widen his view at one end, parts of London, which he said were not just as some people need to have their attributed to anybody, because nobody view widened at the other end. He never read them. Of this last class I can say became what is called "a classical schol- nothing, save that they seemed to be writar or a "classical" enthusiast. But I ten with knowledge and earnestness. The remember being a good deal amazed at second class I sometimes regretted; they finding him appear in the Saturday Re- often, to my taste at least, showed a flipview as a student and commentator on pancy which was unworthy of him. In Virgil. Perhaps I might have been bet-them he sometimes fell into the small ter pleased to find him busy with Polybius tricks of a style of writers immeasurably or Procopius. But it was a gain to find beneath him. But, if any one did attrib him adding something earlier to his med-ute the articles of the first class to me, iæval and modern range. And this was the distinct result of his Italian sojourn. What might not a Greek or a Dalmatian sojourn have done for him?

From another point of view, his Italian travels and studies had an effect which was hardly so wholesome. His love for Italy was enthusiastic; he was always delighted to find himself on what he called "the right side of the Alps." It was not merely that that side of them better suited his failing health; he was really more at home there; his nature was southern

he certainly did me great honor. In a middle -as we used to call it - of that kind, Green was at his very best. Nothing could be better than he was when dealing with such a subject as the tombs at Fontevrault, and the absurd proposal for carrying them away to Westminster. In reviews of books he was, I think, less happy. He said many brilliant, many sharp, many true things; but he never got over the temptation, one most dangerous for a reviewer, to judge everything by himself. He never seemed practically to

"Short History" is wonderful; in many respects it is admirable. It did not indeed fill up the particular hole which it was meant to fill up; but it revealed the ex

understand that each man will do his work best by doing it in his own way. He unconsciously thought that every man was bound to do his work in his, John Richard Green's, way. It was always made a mat-istence of another hole and filled that up ter of blame against any writer, however great he might acknowledge his merits to be in other ways, if he treated his subject in a different fashion from that in which Green himself would have treated it. Perhaps the most curious case of this was when, in a notice of a small "History of England," published in 1873, he blamed the author for keeping to the antiquated way of dividing by kings' reigns. Up to that time every writer of English history, good or bad, had divided in that way; but the "Short History" was going to appear in 1874, and in the "Short History another system was going to be followed.

It was singular that, after Green had ceased to be bound to London by any tie of duty, he bound himself to London by his own free will far more than before. For some years before his death he went hardly anywhere in England. He never visited me after 1875; I never could get him to stir. His failing health doubtless hindered him from attending and speaking at meetings in his old way; and indeed he seemed to have taken something, of a dislike to the process before his health disabled him. I met him once on a platform in these later years; but that was in London, at the famous meeting in St. James's Hall in December, 1876. He did not speak himself; but his neighborhood and the animation of his look certainly encouraged me, as it doubtless did other speakers also. During these later years our friendship remained unbroken and unabated; I received many of his brilliant letters; but I unavoidably saw less of him than in earlier times. He was much in Italy, and so was I; but we never met; our places and seasons and objects were commonly different. I sometimes saw him in London; but he was now grown famous and was sought after; it was not so easy as in the old times to get him by himself or in the company of common friends only. Of his later days I therefore leave others to speak. But perhaps no one can speak so well as I can of what he was in earlier times, alone with me or among friends common to both. The world did not know him then; but I and some others knew him in the freshness and strength of his youthful power, with his whole mind set on a great and congenial work from which I still regret that he was ever called off to any other. The

most happily. "The Making of England" was needful for his reputation; it has high merits in itself; it is amazing as the work of one whose strength had already given way. But the Green of twenty years back both promised and had begun greater things than these. I cannot regret that he has made so brilliant an introduction to my own work; but it was not an introduction for which I looked, but a continuation. The times to which I must ever look back are the days when he and I walked together over so many of the most stirring sites of English, Norman, and Angevin history, when he was planning what we now never can have, the tale of the second making of England told in full as perhaps he alone could have told it.

From All The Year Round ALONG THE SILVER STREAK.

PART I.

UPON the esplanade at Weymouth — the old-fashioned esplanade, with the stone posts and chains, the red-brick, comfortable - looking houses, with their round bow-windows, royal George on his pedestal in glowing gold, with the lion and unicorn equally resplendent, casting a gleam of sunshine in a shady place. Weymouth is exceedingly shady at this moment. The sea, murmuring below, is hardly to be distinguished from the drifting mist and rain -a soft, kindly rain, however, with a suggestion of light behind that may presently break through, and there is a gloom which a breath of air might change to fair weather. the state of the weather is reflected in my mind as I look out seawards, trying to make out through the haze each once familiar headland and sea-mark.

And

Seven years ago, and on just such another soft and misty day, I was pacing up and down the esplanade — not alone, as now, but with a sweet companion. We were both in grief-she, that I was going away, and I, that I was compelled to leave her; for we had been friends from childhood, and had just discovered that we had grown into lovers. We were in the full delight of this discovery a de. light that was rather enhanced than marred by the strong objection of every.