Many readers will be disposed to place him near Macaulay, for though he was less weighty he was more subtle, and not less fascinating. To fewer perhaps will it occur to compare him with Gibbon, yet I am emboldened by the opinion of one of our greatest contemporary historians to venture on the comparison. There are indeed wide differences between the two. Green is as completely a man of the nineteenth century as Gibbon was a man of the eighteenth. Green's style has not the majestic march of Gibbon: it is quick and eager almost to restlessness. Nor is his judgment so uniformly grave and sound. But one may find in his genius what was characteristic of Gibbon's also, the combination of a mastery of multitudinous details, with a large and luminous view of those far-reaching forces and relations which govern the fortunes of peoples and guide the course of empire. This width and comprehensiveness, this power of massing for the purposes of argument the facts which his literary art has just been clothing in its most brilliant hues, is the highest of a historian's gifts, and is the one which seems most surely to establish Green's position among the leading historical minds of his time. ----- [22] This sketch was written in 1883. A volume of Green's Letters, with a short connecting biography by Sir Leslie Stephen, was published in 1901. The letters are extremely good reading, the biography faithful and graceful. [23] Sir George Young and I were the other members. [24] At one time, however, he learnt a little geology from his friend Professor Dawkins, perceiving its bearings on history. SIR GEORGE JESSEL, MASTER OF THE ROLLS There is hardly any walk of English life in which brilliant abilities win so little fame for their possessor among the public at large as that of practice at the Chancery bar. A leading ecclesiastic, or physician, or surgeon, or financier, or manufacturer, or even a great man of science, unless his work is done in some sphere which, like pure mathematics, is far removed from the comprehension of ordinary educated men, is sure, in a time like ours, to become well known to the world and acquire influence in it. A great advocate practising in the Common-law Courts is, of course, still more certain to become a familiar figure. But the cases which are dealt with by the Courts of Equity, though they often involve vast sums of money and raise intricate and important points of law, mostly turn on questions of a technical kind, and are seldom what the newspapers call sensational. Thus it may happen that a practitioner or a judge in these Courts enjoys an extraordinary reputation within his profession, and is by them regarded as one of the ornaments of his time, while the rest of his fellow-countrymen know nothing at all about his merits.