d been easy to select many more than those which now illustrate this
volume. Still, from those that have been reproduced, with the
descriptive studies just as they were written, the reader is in a
position to see the Norman and Cenomannian sites as they were seen by
the great historian himself. More remains from his hand, sketches of
Southern Gaul, of Sicily, Africa, and Spain, which I hope may be
republished; but the present volume has a unity of its own.

I have said thus much because it was the request of those who loved him
best that I should say something here by way of preface, though I have
no claim, historical or personal, that my name should in any way be
linked with his. But the last of his many acts of kindness to me was the
gift of his _Sketches from French Travel_, which had been recently
published in the Tauchnitz edition. And as one of those who have used
his travel-sketches with continued delight, who welcomed him to Oxford
in 1884, and whose privilege it was to attend many of the lectures which
he delivered as Professor, I speak, if without any claim, yet very
gratefully and sincerely. And since his lectures illustrate so well the
work which made his sketches so admirable, I may be suffered to say a
word from my memory of them and of himself.

In his lectures on the text of mediaeval historians he did a service to
young students of history which was, in its way, unique. He showed them
a great historian at work. In his comparison of authorities, in his
references to and fro, in his appeal to every source of illustration,
from fable to architecture, from poetry to charters, he made us familiar
not only with his results, but with his methods of working. It was a
priceless experience. Year after year he continued these lectures,
informal, chatty, but always vigorous and direct, eager to give help,
and keen to receive assistance even from the humblest of his hearers,
choosing his subjects sometimes in connection with the historical work
on which he happened to be engaged, sometimes in more definite relation
to the subjects of the Modern History school. In this way he went
through Gregory of Tours, Paul the Deacon--I speak only of those courses
at which I was myself able to be present--and, in the last year of his
life, the historians of the Saxon Emperors, 936-1002--Widukind,
Thietmar, Richer, Liudprand, and the rest. In these and many other
books, such as the Sicilian historians and the authorities for the