I was staying with him once for two days, and the first night he said to me, "I have three articles to write for the _Saturday Review_, and they must all be done in thirty-six hours." "What are they?" I said; "and how have you found time to think of them?" "Well," he answered, "one is on a volume of Freeman's _Norman Conquest_, another is a 'light middle,' and the last on the history of a small town in England; and I have worked them all into form as I was walking to-day about the parish and in London." One of these studies was finished before two o'clock in the morning, and while I talked to him; the other two were done the next day. It is not uncommon to reach such speed, but it is very uncommon to combine this speed with literary excellence of composition, and with permanent and careful knowledge. The historical reviews were of use to, and gratefully acknowledged by, his brother historians, and frequently extended, in two or three numbers of the _Saturday Review_, to the length of an article in a magazine. I used to think them masterpieces of reviewing, and their one fault was the fault which was then frequent in that _Review_--over-vehemence in slaughtering its foes. Such reviewing cannot be fairly described as journalism. It was an historical scholar speaking to scholars. Another class of articles written by Mr. Green were articles on towns in England, France, or Italy. I do not know whether it was he or Mr. Freeman who introduced this custom of bringing into a short space the historical aspect of a single town or of a famous building, and showing how the town or the building recorded its own history, and how it was linked to general history, but Mr. Green, at least, began it very early in his articles on Oxford. At any rate, it was his habit, at this time, whenever he travelled in England, France, or Italy, to make a study of any town he visited. Articles of this kind--and he had them by fifties in his head--formed the second line of what has been called his journalism. I should prefer to call them contributions to history. They are totally different in quality from ordinary journalism. They are short historical essays.