and the want of a copious, carefully weighed concluding
chapter is more sensible to me than ever; but the substance of the
book is genuine truth, and the utterance of it is clear, sharp,
smiting, and decisive, like a shining Damascus sabre; I never
doubted or doubt but its effect will be great and lasting. No
criticism have I seen since you went away that was worth notice.
Poor Lecky is weak as water--bilge-water with a drop of formic acid
in it: unfortunate Lecky, he is wedded to his Irish idols; let him
alone." The reference to Lecky, as unfair as it is amusing, was
provoked by a review of Froude in Macmillan's Magazine. There are
worse idols than Burke, or even Grattan, and Lecky was an Irishman
after all.

A very different critic from Carlyle expressed an equally favourable
opinion.

"I have an interesting letter," Froude wrote to his friend Lady
Derby, formerly Lady Salisbury, "from Bancroft the historian
(American minister at Berlin) on the Irish book. He, I am happy to
say, accepts the view which I wished to impress on the Americans,
and he has sent me some curious correspondence from the French
Foreign Office illustrating and confirming one of my points. One
evening last summer I met Lady Salisbury,* and told her my opinion
of Lord Clare. She dissented with characteristic emphasis--and she
is not a lady who can easily be moved from her judgments. Still, if
she finds time to read the book I should like to hear that she can
recognise the merits as well as the demerits of a statesman who, in
the former at least, so nearly resembled her husband."

--
* The wife of the late Prime Minister.
--

In another letter he says:

"The meaning of the book as a whole is to show to what comes of forcing
uncongenial institutions on a country to which they are unsuited.
If we had governed Ireland as we govern India, there would have been
no confiscation, no persecution of religion, and consequently none
of the reasons for disloyalty. Having chosen to set Parliament and
an Established Church, and to the lands of the old owners, we left
nothing undone to spoil the chances of success with the experiment."

Froude went to the United States with no very exalted opinion of the
Irish; he returned with the lowest possible. "Like all Irish
patriots," including Grattan, Wolfe Tone "would have accepted
greedily any tolerable appointment from the Government which he had
been execrating." The subsequent history of Ireland has scarce