tle shaded garden where I
met the son and daughter of my host and also Mrs. Gardiner, an
accomplished writer and his associate in his labours. The interval
between tea and dinner we filled up with a long walk over the fields
of Kent during which appeared the social side of the man. He told me
with modesty that he was descended from Cromwell through Ireton, and
the vigour of his stride, with which I found it sometimes hard to keep
up, made it plain that he was of stalwart stock and might have marched
with the Ironsides. A day or two later he bade me good-bye; he and
his wife departing for the continent for a long bicycle tour. The
indefatigable scholar was no less capable in the fields and on the
high road than in alcoves and the Search Room.

Lecky was not in England at the time of my visit and I can only claim
to have had with him an epistolary acquaintance. To some extent I have
worked on the same themes with him, and preserve among my treasures
certain letters in which he made me feel that he regarded my
accomplishment as not unworthy. Sir Charles Dilke and the Bishop
of Oxford, William Stubbs, author of the great _Constitutional
History_, I also never met, but I have letters from them which I
keep with those of Lecky as things which my children will prize. With
Edward A. Freeman, however, I came into cordial relations, a character
well worthy of a sketch. He once came to America where with his fine
English distinction behind him he met a good reception. He deported
himself after the fashion of many another great Englishman, somewhat
clumsily. At St. Louis he amusingly misapprehended conditions.
Remembering the origin of the city he took it for granted that the
audience which greeted him was for the most part of French descent,
whereas probably not a dozen persons present had a trace of French
blood in their veins. Because backwoodsmen a few generations before
had possessed that region he took it for granted that we were
backwoodsmen still. He addressed us under these misconceptions,
the result being a "talking down" to a company of supposedly Latin
extraction and quite illiterate. The fact was that the crowd,
Anglo-Saxon with a strong infusion of German, was made up of people of
high intelligence, the best whom the city could furnish, a city at the
time noted for its interest in philosophical pursuits and the home
of a highly educated class. Freeman's well-meant remarks would have
seemed elementary to an audience o