obstinacies and shortcomings) to take his conclusions _cum grano salis_. He never quite disabuses our mind of the belief that he is a paid advocate; he never conquers by calm; and, upon the whole, impresses one as a man who found little worth the living for in this world, and counted upon very little in any other. The historian, Henry Hallam,[54] on the other hand, who was another notable literary character of this epoch, was full of all serenities of character--even under the weight of such private griefs as were appalling. He was studious, honest, staid--with a great respect for decorum; he would have gravitated socially--as he did--rather to Holland House than to the chambers where Lamb presided over the punch-bowl. In describing the man one describes his histories; slow, calm, steady even to prosiness, yet full; not entertaining in a gossipy sense; not brilliant; scarce ever eloquent. If he is in doubt upon a point he tells you so; if there has been limitation to his research, there is no concealment of it; I think, upon the whole, the honestest of all English historians. In his search for truth, neither party, nor tradition, nor religious scruples make him waver. None can make their historic journey through the Middle Ages without taking into account the authorities he has brought to notice, and the path that he has scored. And yet there is no atmosphere along that path as he traces it. People and towns and towers and monarchs pile along it, clearly defined, but in dead shapes. He had not the art--perhaps he would have disdained the art--to touch all these with picturesque color, and to make that page of the world’s history glow and palpitate with life. Among those great griefs which weighed upon the historian, and to which allusion has been made, I name that one only with which you are perhaps familiar--I mean the sudden death of his son Arthur, a youth of rare accomplishments--counted by many of more brilliant promise than any young Englishman of his time--yet snatched from life, upon a day of summer’s travel, as by a thunderbolt. He lies buried in Clevedon Church, which overhangs the waters of Bristol Channel; and his monument is Tennyson’s wonderful memorial poem. I will not quote from it; but cite only the lines “out of which” (says Dr. John Brown), “as out of the well of the living waters of Love, flows forth all _In Memoriam_.” “Break--break--break At the foot of thy crags, O sea: But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me. And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill; But O, for the touch of a vanished hand And the sound of a voice that is still.”