several places
which he had meant to give it, but still a book such as few but he
could have produced, full of new light, and equal in the parts which
have been fully handled to the best work of his earlier years.

Soon after he returned to Mentone he became rapidly worse, and unfit
for any continuous exertion. He could barely sit in the garden during
an hour or two of morning sunshine. There I saw him in the end of
December, fresh and keen as ever, aware that the most he could hope
for was to live long enough to complete his _Conquest_, but eagerly
reading every new book that came to him from England, starting schemes
for various historical treatises sufficient to fill three life-times,
and ranging in talk over the whole field of politics, literature, and
history. It seemed as if the intellect and will, which strove to
remain till their work was done, were the only things which held the
weak and wasted body together. The ardour of his spirit prolonged life
amid the signs of death. In January there came a new attack, and in
February another unexpected rally. On the 2nd of March he remarked
that it was no use fighting longer, and expired five days afterwards
at the age of forty-six.

Short as his life was, maimed and saddened by an ill-health which gave
his powers no fair chance, it was not an unhappy life, for he had that
immense power of enjoyment which so often belongs to a vivacious
intelligence. He delighted in books, in travel, in his friends'
company, in the constant changes and movements of the world. No
satiety dulled his taste for these things, nor was his spirit, except
for passing moments, darkened by the shadows which to others seemed to
lie so thick around his path. He enjoyed, though without boasting, the
fame his books had won, and the sense of creative power. And the last
six years of his life were brightened by the society and affection of
one who entered into all his tastes and pursuits with the fullest
sympathy, and enabled him, by her unwearied diligence, to prosecute
labours which physical weakness must otherwise have arrested.

He might have won fame as a preacher or as a political journalist. It
was, however, towards historical study that the whole current of his
intellect set, and as it is by what he did in that sphere that he will
be remembered, his special gifts for it deserve to be examined.

A historian needs four kinds of capacity. First of all, accuracy,
and a desire for the exact trut