lly in his intellectual powers. Among the highest of such merits,
merits which the professional student has even more reason to
appreciate than the general reader, because he more frequently
discerns the disturbing causes, are two moral qualities. One is the
zeal for truth, with the willingness to undertake, in a search for it,
a toil by which no credit will ever be gained. The other is a clear
view of, and loyal adherence to, the permanent moral standards. In
both these points Freeman stood in the front rank. He was kindly and
fair in his judgments, and ready to make all the allowances for any
man's conduct which the conditions of his time suggested, but he hated
cruelty, falsehood, oppression, whether in Syracuse twenty-four
centuries ago or in the Ottoman empire to-day. That conscientious
industry which spares no pains to get as near as possible to the facts
never failed him. Though he talked less about facts and verities than
Carlyle did, Carlyle was not so assiduous and so minutely careful in
sifting every statement before he admitted it into his pages. That he
was never betrayed by sentiment into partisanship it would be too much
to say. Scottish critics have accused him, perhaps not without
justice, of being led by his English patriotism to over-state the
claims of the English Crown to suzerainty over Scotland. J. R. Green,
as well as the late Mr. C. H. Pearson, thought that the same cause
disposed him to overlook the weak points in the character of Harold
son of Godwin, one of his favourite heroes. But there have been few
writers who have so seldom erred in this way; few who have striven so
earnestly to do full justice to every cause and every person. Even the
race prejudices which he allowed himself to indulge, in letters and
talk, against Irishmen, Frenchmen, and Jews, scarcely ever appear in
his books. The characters he has drawn of Lucius Cornelius Sulla,
William the Conqueror and William the Red, St. Thomas of Canterbury
(none of whom he liked), and, in his _History of Sicily_, of Nicias,
are models of the fairness which historical portraiture requires. It
is especially interesting to compare his picture of the unfortunate
Athenian with the equally vigorous but harsher view of Grote. Freeman,
whom many people thought fierce, was one of the most soft-hearted of
men, and tolerant of everything but perfidy and cruelty. Though
disposed to be positive in his opinions, he was always willing to
reconsider a point w