We regret deeply to record the death at Menton° of
Mr. J. R. Green, tho author of "A Short History of the English People," of which, to the credit of the British public, 85,000 copies have been sold. Mr. Green, a born student, always in feeble health, from the condition of his lungs, occupied himself during the earlier part of his life so exclusively in reading, that his " History " was a surprise to his closest friends. Its recog- nition was, however, instantaneous, and thenceforward Mr. Green was placed on the short list of historians who will live. A man of endless information, with a fascinating style, and full of the modern feeling which sees in history a, stream of events, rather than a torrent depositing boulders in its rush, Mr. Green possessed that other and highest qualification,—the his- toric instinct. Occasionally careless, and always too indifferent to the mere incidents of history, the battles and debates on which so much seems to turn, and so little probably tarns, the reader never left his work without feeling that Mr. Green's account must be substantially true, and that he was the wiser for reading it. Personally, Mr. Green was the delight of his friends, who in his last illness travelled from all parts of Europe to his bedside, with a devotion usually shown only to the great ; while he left on mere acquaintances the impression of a singularly luminous and tranquil intelligence, to which prejudice or acridity were alike impossible. He will be greatly missed, though his literary work may be considered done.
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