His contributions to the reviews and magazines make a small library, encyclopædic in character. Thirty-one essays were published in the Fortnightly Review; thirty in the Contemporary Review; twenty-seven in Macmillan's Magazine; twelve in the British Quarterly, and as many more in the National Review; while such as are scattered through the other periodicals of Great Britain and the United States swell the list to one hundred and fifty-seven titles. Every conceivable subject is treated,--politics, government, history, field sports, architecture, archaeology, books, linguistics, finance, great men living and dead, questions of the day. But even this list does not comprise all of Freeman's writings, for regularly every week, for more than twenty years, he contributed two long articles to the Saturday Review.
Taken as a whole, this array of publications represents an industry which was simply enormous, and a learning as varied as it was immense. If classified according to their subjects, they fall naturally into six groups. The antiquarian and architectural sketches and addresses are the least valuable and instructive. They are of interest because they exhibit a strong bent of mind which appears constantly in Freeman's works, and because it was by the aid of such remains that he studied the early history of nations. Then come the studies in politics and government, such as the essays on presidential government; on American institutional history; on the House of Lords; the growth of commonwealths, and such elaborate treatises as the six lectures on 'Comparative Politics,' and the 'History of Federal Government,'--all notable because of the liberal spirit and breadth of view that mark them, and because of a positiveness of statement and confidence in the correctness of the author's judgments. Then come the historical essays; then the lectures and addresses; then his occasional pieces, written at the request of publishers or editors to fill some long-felt want; and finally the series of histories on which, in the long run, the reputation of Freeman must rest. These, in the order of merit and value, are the 'Norman Conquest'; the 'Reign of William Rufus,' which is really a supplement to the 'Conquest'; the 'History of Sicily,' which the author did not live to finish.