possible to
stand on deck. The wind and waves dead ahead, and the whole power of
the engines only just able to move the ship against it. It was the
grandest sight I ever witnessed--the splendid Russia, steady as if
she were on a railway, holding her straight course without yielding
one point to the sea--up the long hill-sides of the waves and down
into the troughs--the crests of the sea all round as far as the eye
could reach in one wild whirl of foam and spray. It was worth coming
into the Atlantic to see--with the sense all the time of perfect
security."

Froude's visit was in one respect well timed. President Grant had
just been assured of his second term, and even politicians had
leisure to think of their famous guest. He was at once invited to a
great banquet in New York, and found himself lodged with sumptuous
hospitality in a luxurious hotel at the expense of the Bureau which
had organised the lectures. One newspaper quaintly described him as
"looking like a Scotch farmer, with an open frank face and calm mild
eyes." His History was well known, for the Scribners had sold a
hundred and fifty thousand copies. His opinions were of course freely
invited, and he did not hesitate to give them. "I talk much Toryism
to them all, and ridicule the idea of England's decay, or of our
being in any danger of revolution; and with Colonies and India and
Commerce, etc., I insist that we are just as big as they are, and
have just as large a future before us." Both Froude and his hosts
might have remembered with advantage Disraeli's fine saying that
great nations are those which produce great men. But the sensual
idolatry of mere size is almost equally common on both sides of the
Atlantic.

The banquet was given by Froude's American publishers, the Scribners,
and his old acquaintance Emerson was one of the company. Another was
a popular clergyman, Henry Ward Beecher, and a third was the present
Ambassador of the United States in London, Mr. Whitelaw Reid. In his
speech Froude referred to the object of his visit. He had heard at
home that "one of the most prominent Fenian leaders," O'Donovan
Rossa, "was making a tour in the United States, dilating upon English
tyranny and the wrongs of Ireland." That Froude should cross the seas
to confute O'Donovan Rossa must have struck the audience as scarcely
credible, until he explained his mission, for as such he regarded it,
by asserting that "the judgment of America has more weight in Ire