Froude, however, was a peculiarly bad one. He
was suffering from hernia, and the treatment might well have killed
him. Although his lagging only lasted for a year, he was
persistently bullied and tormented, until he forgot what he had
learned, instead of adding to it. When the body is starved and ill-
treated, the mind will not work. The head master, Dr. Williamson,
was disappointed in a boy of whom he had expected so much, and wrote
unfavourable reports. After enduring undeserved and disabling
hardships for three years and a half, Froude was taken away from
Westminster at the age of fifteen.

To escape from such a den of horrors was at first a relief. But he
soon found that his miseries were not over. He came home in
disgrace. His misfortunes were regarded as his faults, and the worst
construction was put upon everything he said or did. His clothes and
books had been freely stolen in the big, unregulated dormitory. He
was accused of having pawned them, and his denials were not
believed. If he had had a mother, all might have been well, for no
woman with a heart would assume that her child was lying. The
Archdeacon, without a particle of evidence, assumed it at once, and
beat the wretched boy severely in the presence of the approving
Hurrell. Hurrell would have made an excellent inquisitor. His
brother always spoke of him as peculiarly gifted in mind and in
character; but he knew little of human nature, and he doubtless
fancied that in torturing Anthony's body he was helping Anthony's
soul. To alter two words in the fierce couplet of the satirist,

He said his duty, both to man and God,
Required such conduct, which seemed very odd.

Anthony was threatened, in the true inquisitorial spirit, with a
series of floggings, until he should confess what he had not done.
At last, however, he was set down as incorrigibly stupid, and given
up as a bad job. The Archdeacon arrived at the conclusion that his
youngest son was a fool, and might as well be apprenticed to a
tanner. Having hoped that he would be off his hands as a student of
Christ Church at sixteen, he was bitterly disappointed, and took no
pains to conceal his disappointment.

To Anthony himself it seemed a matter of indifference what became of
him, and a hopeless mystery why he had been brought into the world.
He had no friend. The consumption in the family was the boy's only
hope. His mother had died of it, and his brother Robert, who had
been kind to him, and