where than in the Commons; but why should not the latter be relieved of a part of other business which not only is a severe burden and hindrance, but which is itself, in consequence of pressure of time, too often hurried over without proper attention being given to it? Witness the innumerable Acts of Parliament which are the scoff and delight of lawyers and the bane of many practical men of business, whose faults are mostly due to their never having been properly considered before they passed into law.

2. That more facilities should be given to members of the House of Lords to take some part in official work. A most excellent provision now attaches to the appointments of lords-in-waiting, viz.: that they shall work in some Government department during their tenure of office. They thus often semi-officially represent the department to which they are attached in the House, have to answer questions, get up details, and so on, all of which are so many good openings for a young man if he chooses to avail himself of them. I would suggest that this arrangement be more extended, either by increasing the number of these Court appointments, or by some similar means giving facilities of working (without salary) in the various Government offices. If no salary were attached, there could be no possible jealousy on the part of the already existing employés who work under the regular system; or if it were felt that the non-receipt of pay would create too much independence, a nominal salary might be attached to the post, just sufficient to bind the holder.

Or, again, this plan might be extended to other Court appointments besides those of the lords-in-waiting which are open to peers, and thus the Radical objection to sinecures would be met with great force. We have a strong Conservative government at presentpossibly its very strength may produce a more powerful reaction in future than many persons imagine. The above suggestions are, of course, mere crude outlines. I think the considerations which led to them are worthy perhaps of some notice; at all events it will hardly be denied that in this age of change and rapid reform, when the raison d'être of everything we are accustomed to and value is examined with more and more searching and too often malevolent scrutiny, we ought to be doubly on our guard lest the enemy not only root up the wheat with the tares, but do so with some show of reason.

ZOUCHE.

A FEW WORDS ON MR. FREEMAN.

A LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE NINETEENTH CENTury.

SIR,-Two years ago you admitted into the Nineteenth Century a series of short papers written by me on the Life and Times of Becket.' I was not proposing to myself to write a 'history' of that life or those times; my object was merely to draw attention to the volumes now appearing in the series of the Master of the Rolls containing new materials for Becket's Life,' and so far as I went into the details of the story I confined myself to the quarrel between Becket and Henry the Second, to the circumstances which led to the archbishop's murder and immediate canonisation, and to the condition of the Church which gave those events their peculiar significance. The political history of the time, and the early history of Becket in connection with it, would have required a volume to themselves. Such a volume I had no occasion to write, and that part of the subject, therefore, I passed over in a few pages.

These few pages have been criticised at elaborate length in the Contemporary Review by Mr. Freeman, whose unquestionable knowledge of the history of the twelfth century, if knowledge were all that was required, peculiarly fitted him for his task. I might complain, perhaps, that four-fifths of what I wrote, the essential portion of the matter, he has passed over without notice. But if he wished to attack me, he had a right to choose the weakest places, and I confess, with as much readiness as natural infirmity will allow, that in this preliminary sketch he has convicted me of having made one direct mistake, of having allowed two misprints of names to pass uncorrected, and of having expressed myself in three or four sentences in stronger language than I was entitled to use. plead guilty to the charge of being ignorant of everything which I do not mention. I refrained from discussing irrelevant questions on which I had no call to enter, and because I wished-liberal as you were to me of your space-to reserve as much as possible of it for the purpose which I had immediately in hand. It was unnecessary, therefore, on Mr. Freeman's part to accuse me of not knowing what was to be found in children's elementary reading-books. Had this been

all, however, I should have taken my punishment silently. I might have thought that it exceeded the offence; that, in inflicting it, Mr. Freeman had made as many mistakes as I had; that my papers had not been republished, were not designed for republication, and had not received the benefit of the revision which very few review articles are not found to need before they are reproduced in another form. But when faults have to be admitted, the offender may not himself prescribe the measure of his retribution; he must take his medicine, and endeavour to benefit by it, without complaining that he has received an overdose of aloes.

Mr. Freeman has gone beyond the office of reviewer. He has used the occasion for an invective upon my whole literary life, and even my personal character and history; he has described me as dishonest, careless of truth, destitute of every reputable quality save facility in writing which I turn to a bad purpose, and hopeless of amendment.

Even this, however, I suppose that I should have borne from a natural unwillingness to trouble the public with a matter which is my own private concern, and from a sense that, by replying to Mr. Freeman's accusations, I might seem to acknowledge that he had primâ facie grounds for what he has done. But I have a reason for entering on my defence on this one occasion, which your readers will perhaps admit to be a valid one.

For twenty years my writings and myself have been the subject of attacks of an exceptionally unfavourable kind in the Saturday Review-attacks continued with a persistence which even persons the most favourably disposed towards me could not believe to be wholly without justification. The world attributed these articles to Mr. Freeman. I know not whether they were written by him or not, but they carried the weight of Mr. Freeman's reputation, while, as they were anonymous, I could not reply to them. I did indeed, many years ago, on an occasion of what I believed to be a very gross misrepresentation, ask the late editor of the Saturday Review to insert a short letter from me, but I was refused in language which showed that it would be useless for me to make another application. But Mr. Freeman has now adopted the most producible charges in these articles under his own name Having been so frequently reiterated, they perhaps appear to him as established facts; and few as they are in comparison with the whole mass of accusations which the Saturday Review has heaped upon me, I have an opportunity at last of showing what some at least of these criticisms are worth.

When my History of England was completed in 1869, the Reviewer, evidently the same person who had been so long busy with me, spoke of me as having been his victim for fourteen years. The word exactly expressed my condition. Victims are generally innocent and helpless. I knew myself to be guiltless of nine-tenths of

the crimes alleged against me, while I was without the slightest chance of defending myself. In themselves, had I even committed them, these crimes were of the most trivial kind, and seemed important only from the insinuations with which they were dressed out. I endeavoured, till I grew weary of it, to use the Reviewer's help to discover and amend my faults, without quarrelling with the shape in which it was offered. Six or seven blunders in the twelve volumes, and those not affecting in the smallest degree any point of consequence, were all which he enabled me to recognise. Once, indeed, when he produced a mistake which I think he said had made his hair stand on end,' I was frightened by his vehemence. I supposed that he must be right, and I made an alteration in consequence. I discovered afterwards that I had been led, not out of error, but into it. To many other persons who noticed my work I was indebted for extremely valuable suggestions. From the Saturday Reviewer I received next to none. It may be that the character of the criticism made me at last pay too slight attention to it.

Mr. Freeman, however, having, as I said, reproduced some of these charges in his own name, I have determined, after some hesitation, to point out the character of so many of them as he has revived, and to notice a few others of a similar kind, of which he makes use in his personal indictment of me. I think I shall be able to show that if I was really as guilty as he supposes, as regardless of truth, as unscrupulous in assertion, as unable to distinguish between outward facts and my own imagination, as Mr. Freeman says that I am, he at least is not entitled to throw stones at me. I think I shall show that 'prejudice,' 'passion,' 'ignorance,' 'inability to state facts correctly,' going beyond the evidence,'' exaggeration,'' an incurable twist,' or, as he sometimes puts it,' persistent ill luck,' whether they are or are not characteristic of my own writings, have certainly distinguished Mr. Freeman's remarks upon myself. I do not infer of Mr. Freeman, as he does of me, that he is hopelessly untrustworthy, beyond cure, incorrigible, &c. I infer only that he is mortal; that, in writing about a person whom he dislikes, he suffers from the same 'twist' which he condemns in others; that he can be as incorrect in his statements, as unjust in his inferences, as they are; and that about such a person he is disqualified, on his own principles, from forming a fair opinion.

To prove this I need go no further than the first of his four articles in the Contemporary Review. Were I to go over the whole ground, I should have to ask for as much space as Mr. Freeman has occupied himself. I shall content myself, so far as the personal question is concerned, with taking a few instances of various kinds from his opening pages.

Mr. Freeman commences with a sentence which is grossly imI have no copy of the article, and quote from memory. It appeared, as well as I remember, in February 1870.

pertinent.

Natural kindliness,' he says, if no other feeling, might have kept back the fiercest of partisans from ignoring the work of a long-forgotten brother.'

How can Mr. Freeman know my motive for not speaking of my brother in connection with Becket, that he should venture upon ground so sensitive? I mentioned no modern writers, except once Dean Stanley. Natural kindliness would have been more violated if I had specified my brother as a person with whose opinions on the subject I was compelled to differ. I spoke of the rehabilitation of Becket as among the first efforts of the High Church school. My brother's Remains were brought out by the leaders of that school after his death as a party manifesto, and for my own part I consider the publication of the Remains the greatest injury that was ever done to my brother's memory.

But this is venial compared with what follows. He goes on: And from dealing stabs in the dark at a brother's almost forgotten fame.' 'Stabs in the dark?' Can Mr. Freeman have measured the meaning of the words which he is using? If I had written anonymous articles attacking my brother's work, 'stabз in the dark' would have been a correct expression; and Mr. Freeman has correctly measured the estimate likely to be formed of a person who could have been guilty of doing anything so discreditable. Irrespective of natural kindliness,' I look back upon my brother as on the whole the most remarkable man I have ever met in my life. I have never seen any personnot one-in whom, as I now think of him, the excellences of intellect and character were combined in fuller measure. Of my personal feeling towards him I cannot speak. I am ashamed to have been compelled, by what I can describe only as an inexcusable insult, to say what I have said.

After an allusion to Flogging Fitzgerald, for whom it seems I have apologised, Mr. Freeman goes on to Henry the Eighth, the easy subject on which the Saturday Review has for so many years been eloquent. He has begun, it appears, to discover that there were some features in Henry's character not entirely of a ferocious kind; but he has still something to learn. This same man,' he says, 'robbed the churches of their most sacred treasures. He squandered and gambled away all that men before his time had agreed to respect.'

Mr. Freeman has a great objection to exaggeration. He will have us speak by the card. And Mr. Freeman says that all was squandered and gambled away. Did he never hear of the new bishoprics? He had himself spoken of the new foundations in a previous sentence. Did he never hear of Edward the Sixth's Grammar Schools? He perhaps refers to the Abbey plate and jewels. Did he never attend to the enormous exertions of Henry the Eighth to put the kingdom in a state of defence against the threatened invasion