were sweeter and happier than those we have known, will doubtless justify us in believing that they were by no means intolerable. It is not too much to assume that the men by whose valor and virtue American independence was achieved, and who lived to enjoy for half a century thereafter the gratitude of their country and the honest pride of their children, saw wealth as fairly distributed, and the labor of freemen as adequately rewarded, as those of almost any other country or of any previous generation.

POLITICAL COMPROMISES AND POLITICAL LOG-ROLLING› From The American Conflict. Reprinted by permission of O. D. Case & Co., publishers, Hartford, Connecticut

OLITICAL Compromises, though they have been rendered unsavory by abuse, are a necessary incident of mixed or balanced governments; that is, of all but simple, unchecked despotisms. Wherever liberty exists, there diversities of judgment will be developed; and unless one will dominates over all others, a practical mean between widely differing convictions must sometimes be sought. If for example a legislature is composed of two distinct bodies or houses, and they differ, as they occasionally will, with regard to the propriety or the amount of an appropriation required for a certain purpose, and neither is disposed to give way, a partial concession on either hand is often the most feasible mode of practical adjustment. Where the object contemplated is novel, or non-essential to the general efficiency of the public service, such as the construction of a new railroad, canal, or other public work,- the repugnance of either house should suffice entirely to defeat or at least to postpone it; for neither branch has a right to exact from the other conformity with its views on a disputed point, as the price of its own concurrence in measures essential to the existence of the government. The attempt therefore of the Senate of February-March, 1849, to dictate to the House, "You shall consent to such an organization of the Territories as we prescribe, or we will defeat the Civil Appropriation Bill, and thus derange if not arrest the most vital machinery of the government, "-was utterly unjustifiable. Yet this should not blind us to the fact that differences of opinion are at times developed on questions of decided moment, where the rights of each party are equal, and where an ultimate concurrence in one

common line of action is essential. Without some deference to adverse convictions, no confederation of the insurgent colonies was attainable- no Union of the States could have been effected. And where the executive is, by according him the veto, clothed with a limited power over the making of laws, it is inevitable that some deference to his views, his convictions, should be evinced by those who fashion and mature those laws. Under this aspect, compromise in government is sometimes indispensable and laudable.

But what is known in State legislation as log-rolling is quite another matter. A has a bill which he is intent on passing, but which has no intrinsic worth that commends it to his fellow members. But B, C, D, and the residue of the alphabet, have each his "little bill"; not perhaps specially obnoxious or objectionable, but such as could not be passed on its naked merits. All alike must fail, unless carried by that reciprocity of support suggested by their common need and peril. An understanding is effected between their several backers, so that A votes for the bills of B, C, D, etc., as the indispensable means of securing the passage of his own darling; and thus a whole litter of bills become laws, whereof no single one was demanded by the public interest, or could have passed without the aid of others as unworthy as itself. Such is substantially the process whereby our statute-books are loaded with acts which subserve no end but to fill the pockets of the few, at the expense of the rights or the interests of the many.

JOHN RICHARD GREEN

(1837-1883)

EAN STANLEY, on reading one of Green's first literary productions, said: "I see you are in danger of becoming pictur

esque. Beware of it. I have suffered from it." Though Green was then at an age when advice from such a source might well have had some influence, his natural bent was even then too strong to be affected by the warning. Born in Oxford in 1837, he entered Jesus College, where he showed the same remarkable power of reconstructing the life of the past that marked his historical writings in after years, and where his preference for historical chronicles over the classics, and his lack of verbal memory, puzzled his tutor and prevented his winning especial distinction in the studies of his college course. On graduating in 1859 he entered the Church, and in 1866 became vicar of Stepney in East London. Here, besides preaching and visiting, he was a leader in the movement for improving the condition of the East Side, and in the organization of an effective system of charitable relief. Nearly the whole of his meagre income being expended on his parish, he was obliged to make up the deficit by writing articles for the Saturday Review. These were mainly brief historical reviews and essays, but some were of a light character dealing with social topics. Hastily written, but incisive and original, many of them have permanent value, and they were emended and published in a separate volume under the title of 'Stray Studies in England and Italy,' after his 'Short History of the English People' had made him famous.

JOHN R. GREEN

His health was fast breaking under the strain of his parish work; and this, combined with the growing spirit of skepticism, induced him to withdraw from active clerical work and accept an appointment as librarian at Lambeth, where he was able to give much of his time to historical study. He had at first planned a treatise on the Angevin kings, but was urged by his friends to undertake something of wider scope and more general interest. Accordingly he set to work

on his 'Short History of the English People.' The task before him was difficult. He wished to make a book that would entertain the general reader and at the same time be suggestive and instructive to the scholar, and to compress it all within the limits of an "outline," a term usually associated with those bare, crabbed summaries which are sometimes inflicted by teachers upon the young and defenseless, but are avoided by general reader and scholar alike. How far he succeeded appears from the fact that with the exception of Macaulay's work, no treatise on English history has ever met with such prompt and complete success among all classes of readers. The vivid, picturesque style made it exceedingly popular, while the originality of method and of interpretation won for it the praise of men like Freeman and Stubbs. As to its accuracy, there is some difference of opinion. When the book first came out (1874), sharp reviewers caught the historian in many slips, usually of a kind not to affect his general conclusions, but serious enough to injure his reputation for accuracy. Most of these errors were corrected in later editions, and are not to be found in the longer History of the English People' (4 vols.), which contains the material of the earlier work in an expanded, but as some think, in a less interesting form.

His next work was in a field in which none could refuse him credit for original research. The 'Making of England,' dealing with the early part of the Anglo-Saxon period, and the 'Conquest of England,' which carried the narrative down to 1052, show extraordinary skill in handling the scanty historical materials of those times. He was at work on the 'Conquest' at the time of his death, which occurred in 1883. During the last years of his life his illness had frequently interrupted his work; and but for the aid of his wife in historical research as well as in the mechanical labor of amanuensis, he would not have accomplished what he did. As it is, his friends regard his actual achievements as slight compared to what his talents promised had he lived. Still, these achievements entitle him to a high place among modern historians. In accuracy he has many superiors; but in brilliancy of style, in human sympathy, and above all in the power to make the past present and real, he has few equals. "Fiction," he once said, "is history that didn't happen." His own books have the interest of novels without departing in essentials from the truth.

Besides writing the works above mentioned, he issued a selection of Readings from English History' (1879), and wrote with his wife at 'Short Geography of the British Isles' (1881).

THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS

From History of the English People >

N THE fourteenth of October, William led his men at dawn along the higher ground that leads from Hastings to the

battle-field which Harold had chosen. From the mound of Telham the Normans saw the host of the English gathered thickly behind a rough trench and a stockade on the height of Senlac. Marshy ground covered their right; on the left, the most exposed part of the position, the hus-carles or body-guard of Harold, men in full armor and wielding huge axes, were grouped round the Golden Dragon of Wessex and the Standard of the King. The rest of the ground was covered by thick masses of half-armed rustics, who had flocked at Harold's summons to the fight with the stranger. It was against the centre of this formidable position that William arrayed his Norman knighthood, while the mercenary forces he had gathered in France and Brittany were ordered to attack its flanks. A general charge of the Norman foot opened the battle; in front rode the minstrel Taillefer, tossing his sword in the air and catching it again, while he chanted the song of Roland. He was the first of the host who struck a blow, and he was the first to fall. The charge broke vainly on the stout stockade, behind which the English warriors plied axe and javelin with fierce cries of "Out! out!" and the repulse of the Norman footmen was followed by a repulse of the Norman horse. Again and again the duke rallied and led them to the fatal stockade. All the fury of fight that glowed in his Norseman's blood, all the headlong valor that spurred him over the slopes of Val-ès-dunes, mingled that day with the coolness of head, the dogged perseverance, the inexhaustible faculty of resource, which shone at Mortemer and Varaville. His Breton troops, entangled in the marshy ground. on his left, broke in disorder; and as panic spread through the army, a cry arose that the duke was slain. William tore off his helmet: "I live," he shouted, "and by God's help I will conquer yet!" Maddened by a fresh repulse, the duke spurred right at the Standard; unhorsed, his terrible mace struck down Gyrth, the King's brother; again dismounted, a blow from his hand hurled to the ground an unmannerly rider who would not lend him his steed. Amidst the roar and tumult of the battle, he turned the