Mr. Bryce’s writings are remarkable for the lucid organization of a wealth of detail into significant principles and sound conclusions; for vividness in the presentation of whatever pertains to humanity, and for gracious, winning English. One finds always in his work simplicity in the unfolding of material which has been carefully gathered and calmly judged. There is perfect clarity in the handling of a mass of detail, and such skillful subordination of it and masterly emphasis of important principles that the reader easily catches the bearing on the central thought of every illustration or description. There is also in the writing a solidity and firmness, a bracing stalwartness--qualities which are the result of the writer’s own sturdy nature. But this is not all. The author’s almost novelistic power of seeing persons and things makes his writing as vivid as a story; even his most abstract propositions are tangible and real. And the material is, moreover, so sympathetically and earnestly treated that it is at times lifted above mere pedestrian exposition and becomes warm with the feeling of the writer. The everyday words and unadorned sentences, infused with the spirit of the one who writes, become potent to stir slumbering ideals. Suddenly over the level way of mere intellectual matters falls a dreamy light, a Celtic graciousness of manner; and the reader no longer journeys along a mere brown path, but sees the familiar scenes of the way idealized by the touch of poetry. The value of skillful exposition as an asset for leadership, or for the accomplishment of any other purpose, Mr. Bryce fully appreciates. A command of language is a power possessed by nearly every one of the men, eminent in the nineteenth century, whom Mr. Bryce describes in his _Studies in Contemporary Biography_. By means of it Mr. John Richard Green wrote the most brilliant history of modern times; through the stirring editorials of the _Nation_, Mr. Godkin was able to arouse an indifferent American public to a more earnest consideration of the national welfare; and it was Mr. Gladstone’s gift of “noble utterance” which more than any other talent enabled him for many years to hold an authoritative political position. Mr. Bryce’s own rare power as a writer of vigorous, persuasive English is one of the qualities which has made him in a certain sense a citizen of the world with an almost world-wide influence.