nter absences made public appearances impossible
to him. He was all his life an ardent Liberal. His sympathy with
national movements did not confine itself to Continental Europe, but
embraced Ireland and made him a Home Ruler long before Mr. Gladstone
and the Liberal party adopted that policy. It ought to be added that
though he had ceased to belong to the Church of England, he remained
strongly opposed to disestablishment.

When he had completed the re-casting of his _Short History_ in the
form of a larger book, which appeared under the title of _A History of
the English People_, he addressed himself with characteristic activity
to a new project. He had for a long time meditated upon the _origines_
of English history, the settlement of the Teutonic invaders in
Britain, followed by the consolidation of their tribes into a nation
with definite institutions and a settled order; and his desire to
treat this topic was stimulated by the way in which some critics had
sought to disparage his _Short History_ as a mere popularising of
other people's ideas. The criticism was unjust, for, if there had been
no rummaging in MS. sources for the _Short History_, there was
abundant originality in the views the book contained. However, these
carpings disposed his friends to recommend an enterprise which would
lead him to deal chiefly with original authorities, and to put forth
those powers of criticism and construction which they knew him to
possess. Thus he set to work afresh at the very beginning, at Roman
Britain and the Saxon Conquest. He had not advanced far when, having
gone to spend the winter in Egypt, he caught an illness which so told
on his weak frame that he was only just able to return to London in
April, and would not have reached it at all but for the care with
which he was tended by his wife. (He had married Miss Alice Stopford
in 1877.) In a few weeks he so far recovered as to be able to resume
his studies, though now forbidden to give to them more than two or
three hours a day. However, what he could not do alone he did with and
through his wife, who consulted the original sources for him,
investigated obscure points, and wrote at his dictation. In this way,
during the summer and autumn months of 1881, when often some slight
change of weather would throw him back and make work impossible for
days or weeks, the book was prepared, which he published in February
1882, under the title of _The Making of England_. Even in th