free negro in Virginia. Another story speaks of free negroes as forbidden to dwell there. Some of your students of State laws will know the date of that bit of legislation." *

Mr. Freeman's visit to Baltimore occurred before his visit to Virginia. He lectured first in Boston, then at Cornell University, and immediately afterwards in Baltimore at the Peabody Institute, beginning November 15 and continuing until November 25. Both Cornell and Johns Hopkins Universities availed themselves of Mr. Freeman's visit to America to engage him for short courses of lectures before their students. On arriving in Baltimore, the first place Mr. Freeman visited was the University Library. Although the historian professes "to hate libraries as well as schools," his professions should not be taken quite literally. He evidently enjoyed what some people call the "Johns Hopkins School," and he stayed one entire forenoon, and came again the next day. He found some things that he had never before seen, and he manifested considerable interest in the so-called "New Book Department' -an arrangement for securing the most recent scientific literature from England, France, and Germany. Mr. Freeman saw at once the cosmopolitan relations and practical value of this department and also of the University system of " exchanges" with the proceedings of academies and other learned societies of the old world. He even intimated that his own

Free negroes were "permitted by the court of any county or corporation to remain in this State" (Code of Va, 1849, 466, Code, 1860, 520); but the law against emancipated negroes abiding in the State or Colony was of very ancient standing. According to the Act of 1691, no person could set free a slave without paying for his transportation out of the country within six months after setting him free. The Act of January 25, 1806, was fundamental to all Virginia legislation during the present century touching the condition of freedmen; it was provided that if any slave thereafter emancipated should remain within the State more than twelve months after his right to freedom accrued, he should forfeit such right and might be sold for the benefit of the poor of the county or corporation. Cf. Acts 1815-16, Code 1819, Acts 1826-7, 1830-1, 1836-7. By an Act of 1840-1," No free negro shall migrate into this State." By the Va. Const. of 1851, which was in force in 1860, Slaves hereafter emancipated shall forfeit their freedom by remaining in the commonwealth more than twelve months after they become actually free, and shall be reduced to slavery as may be prescribed by law." The letter of the law was probably more severe than the spirit of its execution. In point of fact, both free and emancipated negroes were always allowed in Virginia by permission of the justices of a county court. In fact, the law allowed "free negroes" to "be registered and numbered " every five years by the clerk of the county court" (Codes of 1849, 1860). Free negroes were even allowed to own slaves of a certain kind, for example, a free negro could own his wife and children, and their descent, also his own parents. And conversely, a free negro wife might own her husband, children, and parents.

A student from South Carolina, Mr. B. J Ramage, says it was no unusual thing before the war for free negroes to own considerable property, both real estate and slaves. He calls attention to an interesting item in the Baltimore Day, September 27, 1882: "Henry Todd, who lives in Darien, is the wealthiest colored man in Georgia When a youth, his master died and left him his freedom. When the Confederacy fell, he lost twenty slaves and some Confederate bonds. After the war he continued farming operations and engaged in the lumber business. He is now 65 years old and is worth $100,000 in good investments."-H. B. A.

retired life at his country-home in Somerset cut him off in some degree from the main stream of contemporary literature, to which members of the Johns Hopkins have constant access. This frank confession is not at

all inconsistent with Mr. Freeman's well-known answer to the American professor who asked him where he wrote his books: "In my own house, to be sure, where else should I?" Although the historian of the Norman Conquest declares that he has never in his life consulted the library of the British Museum, yet he himself admits that, "There are times for which the library of the British Museum, or any other public library must be invaluable; but these times are not the eleventh and twelfth centuries." The point is, that for a man's own special study, it is possible to have, in some cases, all necessary original materials around him. That point Mr. Freeman saw illustrated again and again in the special department-collections of the Johns Hopkins Universitas Studiorum. But it would be strange indeed if the great and rushing stream of nineteenth century literature did not impress the English historian of politics even more profoundly than it does those who are borne upon the current. He feels keenly enough "the utter hopelessness of keeping up with the ever-growing mass of German books, and yet more with the vaster mass of treatises which are hidden away in German periodicals and local transactions. Of all of these every German scholar expects us to be masters, while to most of us they are practically as inaccessible as if they were shut up in the archives of the Vatican."

The continuity of human history is the life principle of Mr. Freeman's philosophy. This principle he found already transplanted to American shores. He found it germinating in the Public Schools of Baltimore through the influence of his friend the Superintendent of Public Instruction, Henry E. Shepherd, formerly a student at the University of Virginia, now President of Charleston College, South Carolina. He found this principle bearing fruit in the Johns Hopkins University. The English historian became interested at once in the studies of Historical and Political Science, which were there in active progress. He met students in private and in public. He visited their special libraries and work-shops, where he lent his master-hand in aid of apprentice tasks. With Bacon's folio edition of the laws of Maryland before him, he pointed out to Maryland young men-graduates of the Johns Hopkins University, the City College, and the Public Schools-the continuity of Old English institutions in their native State. He went with a member of the University to the Library of the Maryland Historical Society, where in the company of Mr. John H. B. Latrobe, the President, Mr. J. W. M. Lee, the Librarian, and other members of that institution, he examined some of the manuscript records of Colonial Maryland. And, before leaving Baltimore, he penned the following letter which was intended by him to quicken public as well as individual interest in the collection and publication of the Maryland State Papers:

66

"Mt. Vernon Hotel, Baltimore, November 27th, 1881.

"I cannot leave Baltimore without saying a word or two about the State records of Maryland, of which you were good enough to give me a glimpse both in the University Library and in that of the Historical Society. I did not see much, but I saw enough to get some notion of their great interest and importance. But the few things which I saw either in print or in manuscript must, I fancy, be mere fragments from far greater stores at Annapolis or elsewhere. A systematic publication would be a very great gain, and the State Legislature would surely not refuse its help, if the matter were pressed upon it by influential persons and societies in the State. During the short time that I have been in America, I have been more and more impressed by the deep interest of the early history of all these lands, first as provinces, then as independent States. Each State has in the most marked way its own character, and gives some special kind of instruction in comparative political history. The local annals of Maryland or of any other State are something more than mere local history, something more than part of the history of the United States or of the whole English-speaking people. They are really contributions to the general science of politics-no less than the lessons which we should have had if Aristotle's comments on the kindred commonwealths of old Greece had been spared to us. . . . ."

This letter, shown to influential men, and read to the Historical Society by the Hon. George William Brown, in connection with a similar letter written by James Bryce, M. P., who was in Baltimore at the same time with Mr. Freeman, has at last resulted, through the combined action of the Society and of the State Legislature, in the transfer of the mass of Colonial and Revolutionary Archives from Annapolis to Baltimore, where, in a well-lighted but fire-proof vault lately constructed by private subscription the manuscript records can be used to the best advantage by students of Maryland History. The State has also provided for the gradual but systematic publication of these Archives under the auspices of the Maryland Historical Society. Thus by the institution of an honorable Record Commission, a purely scientific undertaking is removed from all political influences. These results are the direct historic outgrowth of Mr. Freeman's letter, supported by personal and corporate power. The letter was first published in the New York Nation,* immedi

*Note in the Nation, December 22, 1881, in connection with a review of the "Calendar of Virginia State Papers;" cf. article in the Baltimore American, December 24, 1881; editorial in the Sun, December 26, 1881; New York Times, December 29, 1881. An account of the Archives themselves and of the provisions of the Bill which passed the Maryland Senate March 16 and the House of Delegates, March 12, 1882, may be found in the Nation "Notes," March 30, 1882; also in the same number, an account of the "Stevens Index of Maryland Documents in the State Paper Office, London," which Index, containing descriptions and abstracts of 1,729 Maryland documents now preserved in

ately afterwards in Baltimore newspapers, and a copy of it was sent to every member of the Maryland Legislature. The letter is reproduced above in a more complete form than heretofore, for the sake of its permanent preservation as a contribution to the Science of Maryland History.

Mr. Freeman's visit to Baltimore has a certain historical value, which will become more and more apparent when the influence which he exerted here upon the Historical Society and upon the Johns Hopkins University goes forth into the State of Maryland and into the country at large. The English lecturer made an impression wherever he went in this country, in Boston, Ithaca, New Haven, Providence, New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and other places; but it is the writer's belief, based upon careful inquiry, that the impression produced upon the students of the Johns Hopkins University, the young life of Baltimore, was the best, the strongest, and the most abiding of all. While his public lectures at the Peabody Institute and elsewhere excited much attention and remark at the time they were given, yet these popular addresses, tested by the comparative method, were everywhere less quickening and less permanent in their historic influence than the half dozen informal "talks" given to a company of advanced students, meeting in Hopkins Hall upon the afternoons of days alternating with Mr. Freeman's public lectures at the Peabody Institute. In a room of small size, before a strictly University audience, without a sheet of paper between him and his hearers, with no lyceum-apparatus save a pointer and one or two outline maps prepared for the illustration of special matters, Mr. Freeman in plain English,-vigorous, and eloquent-set forth "the Eternal Eastern Question" in the light of past Politics and present History. He spoke of the Roman Power in the East; the Saracens and the Slavs; the final Division of the East and the West; the Turks, Franks, and Venetians; the Ottomans and the beginnings of Deliverance. Probably no such telling, inspiring course was anywhere given by the English historian in his American tour.

Circumstances contributed to make Mr. Freeman's lectures at the Johns Hopkins University a peculiar and remarkable success. In the first place, the President of the University had insisted upon it that Mr. Freeman should talk to the students upon some special theme instead of reading one of his two general courses of written lectures. The informality of these "talks" which Mr. Freeman was at first very reluctant to give, was inade doubly pleasing by the fact that the historian proved a good extempore speaker. The author of the Norman Conquest has "stumped" the County of Somerset and knows how to make a good

England, was presented to the Maryland Historical Society by George Peabody, and thus supplements the Annapolis collection. These Nation Notes" of March 30, 1882, were reprinted in the Johns Hopkins University Circular, May, 1882.

off-hand speech. In the second place, the natural orator was doubtless fired by the enthusiasm of his student-hearers and by the presence and applause of another historian and politician, his friend James Bryce, M. P., whose remarkable lectures upon English Politics followed close upon Mr. Freeman, upon the same platform, and upon the same days. But what most of all contributed to Mr. Freeman's success at the University was the unimpeded rush of his own thought and feeling into the historic fields of South-Eastern Europe, on which political interest was then centering anew.

Mr. Freeman had come to America directly from Dalmatia without tarrying in England. He had come from the historic border-ground between the Aryan and the Turk, between Venice and the Ottoman Power, between Old and New Rome. He had come to the Western Empire of the English People, which, expanding with the great Teutonic race from local centres, is repeating in the continental island of Atlantis and in the continent of Asia, with Egypt and Ocean between, the experiment of the Roman People upon a grander and nobler scale. He came from ancient municipal centres of Grecian culture and Roman dominion,-from Ragusa, upon the rocks of the Dalmatian coast, a city of refuge for the Grecian colony of Epidauros,* as Rome was a city of refuge for the village communities of Italy,-from Spalato in Dalmatia, once a city of refuge for a Roman Emperor, Diocletian, who, born in this Illyrian border-land, was the first to propose the institution of two Caesars and of Roman capitals wherever Emperors took up their abode, whether at Spalato, Nikomedeia, Milan, Trier, or York.

The English historian of "The Illyrian Emperors and their Land" came to a new York and to other capitals of a westward-moving English Empire. Like an historical ambassador from the East, such as Emanuel Chrysoloras, who came from Constantinople to Rome in 1396 in the interest of the Eastern Empire and tarried in Italy three years to teach Greek; or as Georgius Gemistus (Pletho) who came in the interest of the Greek Church to attend the Council of Florence in 1439 and remained in that city for many years to lecture upon Platonic Philosophy, even so the historian of "The English People in their Three Homes," coming to Boston and Baltimore with a message upon his lips that invited national belief in the civic kinship and religious unity of England and America, came also with another message from the East. He came representing the history of an older Eastern Empire than that of England in Egypt and India. He came with a book in press upon "The Subject and Neighbor Lands of Venice"† (Spalato, Ragusa, and other Dalmatian

* Epidauros in Dalmatia is now known as Ragusa Vecchia. Curiously enough, the mother-town has taken its daughter's name. It is as though England should assume the name, Old America.

+ Reviewed in the Nation, February 9, 1882.