Thirlwall did not revisit Cambridge until 1842, when he stayed in Trinity College for two days during the installation of the Duke of Northumberland as Chancellor. Such an occasion, however, does not give much opportunity for judging of the real state of the University. He paid a similar visit in 1847, when Prince Albert was installed. After this he did not see Cambridge again until the spring of 1869, when he stayed at Trinity Lodge with his old friend Dr Thompson, and on Whitsunday, May 16, preached before the University in Great S. Mary’s Church. He has himself recorded that he was never so much pleased with the place since he went up as a freshman, and has given an amusing description of a leisurely stroll round the backs of the colleges and through part of the town[57], which, he might have added, he insisted upon taking without a companion. Those who conversed with him on that occasion remember that he was much struck by the changes which had taken place in the University since he had left it; and that he observed with pleasure the increased numbers of the undergraduates, and the movement and activity which seemed to reign everywhere. It was at Kirby Underdale that Thirlwall wrote the greater part of the work on which his reputation as a scholar and a man of letters will chiefly rest—his _History of Greece_—of which the first volume had been published before he finally left Cambridge[58]. It is, perhaps, fortunate for the world that he had bound himself to produce the volumes at regular intervals[59], and that his editor, Dr Dionysius Lardner (whom he used to call ‘Dionysius the Tyrant’), was not a man to grant delays; for, had the conditions been easier, parochial cares and new interests might have retarded the production of it indefinitely, or even stopped it altogether. From the first Thirlwall had applied himself to the work with strenuous and unremitting energy. At Cambridge he used to work all day until half-past three o’clock in the afternoon, when he might be seen leaving his rooms for a half-hour’s rapid walk before dinner in Hall, then served at four o’clock; and in the country he is said to have spent sixteen hours of the twenty-four in his study. We do not know what was the original design of the work, as part of the _Cabinet Cyclopædia_, but we have it on Thirlwall’s own authority that it was ‘much narrower than that which it actually reached[60],’ and before long it was further expanded into eight goodly octavos. The first of these was scarcely in the hands of the public when Grote’s _History of Greece_, published, like its predecessor, volume by volume, began to make its appearance. It was mentioned above that Grote and Thirlwall had been school-fellows; but, though they met not unfrequently in London afterwards, Thirlwall knew so little of his friend’s intentions that he had been heard to say, ‘Grote is the man who ought to write the History of Greece.’ When it did appear, he at once welcomed it with enthusiasm.