For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents. From Macmillan's Magazine. IN MEMORIAM. enjoyed his acquaintance. The only eminent person who seems to have appreciated and influenced him was the late Dean of Westminster, then professor of Church. Green had attended his lectures, and Stanley, whose kindly interest in young men never failed, was struck by him, and had some share in turning his studies into a historical direction. He graduated in 1860, not having gone in for honors, partly, perhaps, because he had not received from the then tutors of the college the recognition to which he was entitled. As it is painful to speak of a friend | ecclesiastical history and canon of Christ when the sense of loss is still fresh and keen, so it is perhaps unwise, because the public is apt to suppose that words used at such a time are the expression rather of affection and regret than of deliberate judgment, and to refer them to the category of epitaphs and funeral orations. Nevertheless this is a risk which he must be content to take who, perceiving how quickly, in a society like ours, the waters close over a vanished life, fears to let slip the first opportunity of commemorating, however briefly and inadequately, gifts which deserve to be held in admiring remembrance. There must be many among those who read Mr. Green's "Short History of the English People" who would willingly hear something more about him than was contained in the newspapers which announced his death in March last, from one who knew him well, but who desires to speak of him quite dispassionately. John Richard Green was born in Ox- In 1860 he was ordained, and became curate in London at St. Barnabas, King's Square, whence, after two years' experience, and one or two temporary engage. ments, including the sole charge of a parish in Hoxton, he was appointed in 1865 to the incumbency of St. Philip's, Stepney, a district church in one of the poorest parts of London, where the vicar's income was ill-proportioned to the claims which the needs of his parishioners made upon him. Here he worked with great zeal and assiduity for about three years, gaining an insight into the condition and needs of the poor a view of the realities of life-which scholars and historians seldom obtain. He learned, in fact, to know men, and the real forces that sway them; and he used to say in later life that he was conscious how much this had helped him in historical writing. Gibbon, as every one knows, made a similar remark about his experience as a captain in the Hampshire militia. He threw the whole force of his nature into the parish schools, spending some time in every day in them; he visited incessantly; and he took a particularly active part in the movement for regulating and controlling private charity which led to the formation of the Charity Organization Society. An outbreak of cholera and period of serious distress among the poor occurred during his incumbency, a period which drew some earnest workers from other parts of London to give their help to the clergy of the East End. Edward Denison, who is affectionately remembered by many who knew him in Oxford and London,* chose Green's parish to work in, and the two friends confirmed one another in their crusade against indiscriminate and demoralizing charity. It was at this time that Green, who spent pretty nearly all his income as vicar upon the parish, found himself obliged, for the sake of his work there, to earn some money otherwise, and began to write for the Saturday Review. The addition of this labor to the daily fatigues of his parish duties told on his health, which had always been delicate, and made him will ingly accept from Archbishop Tait, who had early marked and learned to value his abilities, the post of librarian at Lambeth. He quitted Stepney, and never took any other clerical work. Although physical weakness was one of the causes which compelled this step, there was also another. He had been brought up in Tractarian views, and was at one time (so, at least, I have heard), when a boy, on the point of entering the Church of Rome. This tendency passed off, and before he went to St. Philip's, he had become a Broad Churchman, and was much influenced by the writings of Mr. F. D. Maurice, whom he knew and used frequently to meet, and whose pure and noble character, even more perhaps than his preaching, had profoundly impressed him. However, his restlessly active mind did not stop long there. The same movement which had carried him away from Tractarianism made him feel less and less at home in the ministry of the Church of England, and must have led him, even had his health been stronger, to withdraw from clerical duties. After a few years he ceased to be addressed by his friends under the usual clerical prefix; but he continued to interest himself in ecclesiastical affairs, and always retained a warm affection for the Established Church. On leaving Stepney he went to live in lodgings in Beaumont Street, Marylebone, and divided his time between Lambeth and literary work. He now during several years wrote a good deal for the Saturday Review, and his articles were among the best, perhaps the very best, * Green has spoken of him in an article entitled "A Brother of the Poor," published in his "Stray Studies." which then appeared in that organ. The most valuable of them were reviews of historical books and descriptions from the historical point of view of cities or remarkable places, especially English and French towns. Some of these are masterpieces, and well deserve to be collected and republished. Other articles were on social, or what may be called occasional, topics, and attracted much notice at the time from their gaiety and lightness of touch. Politics he never touched, nor was he in the ordinary sense of the word a journalist, for with the exception of these social articles, his work was all done in his own historical field, and done with as much care and pains as others would bestow on the composition of a book. Upon this subject I may quote the words of one of his oldest and most intimate friends who knew all he did in those days, and who conceives that it was a mistake to describe him, as some newspapers did in referring to his death, as a journalist: The real history of this writing for the Saturday Review has much personal, pathetic, and literary interest. It was when he was vicar of St. Philip's, The income Stepney, that he wrote the most. of the place was, I think, 300%. a year, and the poverty of the parish was very great. Mr. Green spent every penny of this income on the parish. And he wrote-in order to live, and often when he was wearied out with the work of the day and late into the night-two, and often three, articles a week for the Saturday Review. It was less of a strain to him than it would have been to many others, because he wrote with such speed, and because his capacity for rapidly throwing his subject into form, and his memory were so remarkable. But it was a severe strain, nevertheless, for one who, at the time, had in him the beginnings of the disease of which he died. I was staying with him once for two days, and the first night he said to me, "I have three articles to write for the Saturday Review, and they must all be done in thirty-six hours." "What are they?" I said; "and how have "Well," you found time to think of them?" he answered, one is on a volume of Freeman's Norman Conquest,' another is a 'light middle,' and the last on the history of a small town in England; and I have worked them all into form as I was walking to day about the parish and in London." One of these studies was finished before two o'clock in the morning, and while I talked to him; the other two were done the next day. It is not uncommon to reach such speed, but it is very uncommon to combine this speed with literary excellence of com position, and with permanent and careful knowledge. The historical reviews were of use to, and gratefully acknowledged by, his brother historians, and frequently extended, in two or three numbers of the Saturday Review, to the length of an article in a magazine. I used to think them masterpieces of reviewing, and their one fault was the fault which was then frequent in that review-over-vehemence in slaughtering its foes. Such reviewing cannot be fairly described as journalism. It was an historical scholar speaking to scholars. I do not call it journalism when Mr. Gardiner writes an article on his own subject in the Academy. Another class of articles written by Mr. Green were articles on towns in England, France, or Italy. I do not know whether it was he or Mr. Freeman who introduced this custom of bringing into a short space the historical aspect of a single town or of a famous building, and showing how the town or the building recorded its own history, and how it was linked to general history, but Mr. Green, at least, began it very early in his articles on Oxford. At any rate, it was his habit, at this time, whenever he travelled in England, France, or Italy, to make a study of any town he visited. Articles of this kind-and he had them by fifties in his head-formed the second line of what has been called his journalism. I should prefer to call them contributions to history. They are totally different in quality from ordinary journalism. They are short historical essays. As his duties at Lambeth made no great demands on his time, he was now able to devote himself more steadily to historical work. His first impulse in that direction seems, as I have said, to have been received from Dean Stanley at Oxford. His next came from Mr. E. A. Freeman, who had listened to, and been much struck by, a paper of his at the meeting of a local archæological society (at Wellington in Somersetshire), and who became from that time his warm and steadfast friend. Green was a born historian, and would have been eminent without any help except that of books. But he was wise enough to know the value of personal counsel and direction, and generous enough to be heartily grateful for what he received. He did not belong in any special sense to what has been called Mr. Freeman's school, differing widely from that distinguished writer in many of his views, and still more But he learned an in style and manner. immense deal from Mr. Freeman, and he delighted to acknowledge his debt. He learned among other things, the value of accuracy, the way to handle original authorities, the interpretation of architecture, and he received, during many years of intimate intercourse, the constant symwhose affection was never blind to faults, pathy and encouragement of a friend while his admiration was never clouded by jealousy. It was his good fortune to win the regard and receive the advice of another illustrious historian, Dr. Stubbs, who has expressed in language perhaps more measured, but not less emphatic than Mr. Freeman's, his sense of Green's services to English history. These two he used to call his masters; but no one who has read him and them needs to be told that his was one of those strong and rich intelligences which, in becoming more perfect by the study of others, loses nothing of its originality. His first continuous studies had lain among the Angevin kings, and the notebooks still exist in which he had accumu. lated materials for their history. However, the book was never written, for when the state of his lungs (which forced him to spend the winter of 1870-71 at San Remo) had begun to alarm his friends, they urged him to throw himself at once into some book likely to touch the world more than a minute account of so remote a period could do. Accordingly he began, and in two or three years, his winters abroad interrupting work a good deal, he completed the "Short History of the English People. When a good deal of it had gone through the press, he felt, and his friends agreed with him, that the style of the earlier chapters was too much in the eager, quick, sketchy, "point-making" manner of his Saturday Review articles, "and did not possess " (says the friend I have already quoted) "enough historical |