Long before this event, Freeman was deep in historical study. His fortune was easy. The injunction that he should eat bread in the sweat of his face had not been laid on him. His time was his own, and was devoted with characteristic zeal and energy to labor in the field of history, which in the course of fifty years was made to yield him a goodly crop. Year after year he poured forth a steady stream of Essays, Thoughts, Remarks, Suggestions, Lectures, Short Histories on matters of current interest, little monographs on great events or great men,--all covering a range of subjects which bear evidence to most astonishing versatility and learning. Sometimes his topic was a cathedral church, as that of Wells or Leominster Priory; or a cathedral city, as Ely or Norwich. At others it was a grave historical theme, as the 'Unity of History'; or 'Comparative Politics'; or the 'Growth of the English Constitution from the Earliest Times'; or 'Old English History for Children.' His 'General Sketch of European History' is still a standard text book in our high schools and colleges. His 'William the Conqueror' in Macmillan's 'Twelve English Statesmen'; his 'Short History of the Norman Conquest of England' in the Clarendon Press Series; his studies of Godwin, Harold, and the Normans, in the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica,' are the best of their kind. His contributions to the reviews and magazines make a small library, encyclopaedic in character. Thirty-one essays were published in the Fortnightly Review; thirty in the Contemporary Review; twenty-seven in Macmillan's Magazine; twelve in the British Quarterly, and as many more in the National Review; while such as are scattered through the other periodicals of Great Britain and the United States swell the list to one hundred and fifty-seven titles. Every conceivable subject is treated,--politics, government, history, field sports, architecture, archaeology, books, linguistics, finance, great men living and dead, questions of the day. But even this list does not comprise all of Freeman's writings, for regularly every week, for more than twenty years, he contributed two long articles to the Saturday Review.