278 A Century of Science 



them out on every possible occasion. No writer 

 has so effectively warned the historical student 

 against that besetting sin of &quot; bondage to the 

 modern map.&quot; His exposition of historical geo 

 graphy is a book of purest gold, and no serious 

 student of history can safely neglect it. 



In 1881 Mr. Freeman visited the United States, 

 and gave lectures on &quot; The English People in its 

 Three Homes&quot; and &quot;The Practical Bearings of 

 European History,&quot; which were afterward published 

 in a volume. After returning home he published 

 &quot; Some Impressions of the United States &quot; (1883), 

 a very entertaining book because of the author s 

 ingrained habit of comparing and discriminating 

 social phenomena upon so wide a scale. Gauls and 

 Illyrians, Wessex and Achaia, come in to point 

 each a moral, and show how to this great historian 

 the whole European past was almost as much a 

 present and living reality as the incidents occurring 

 before his eyes. 



In the same year, 1883, Freeman published 

 his &quot;English Towns and Districts,&quot; a series of 

 addresses and sketches in which he had from time 

 to time embodied the results of his antiquarian and 

 architectural studies in many parts of England and 

 Wales. It is a book of rare fascination as illus 

 trating how largely national history is made up of 



