een taught by his brother at home, and by his
friends at Oxford, to despise Evangelicals as silly, ignorant,
ridiculous persons. He saw in Mr. Cleaver the perfect type of a
Christian gentleman, cultivated, pious, and well bred. Mrs. Cleaver
was worthy of her husband. They were both models of practical
Christianity. They and their circle held all the opinions about
Catholicism and the Reformation which Newman and the Anglo-Catholics
denounced. The real thing was always among them, and they did not
want any imitation. "A clergyman," says Froude, "who was afterwards
a Bishop in the Irish Church, declared in my hearing that the theory
of a Christian priesthood was a fiction; that the notion of the
Sacraments as having a mechanical efficacy irrespective of their
conscious effect upon the mind of the receiver was an idolatrous
superstition; that the Church was a human institution, which had
varied in form in different ages, and might vary again; that it was
always fallible; that it might have Bishops in England, and dispense
with Bishops in Scotland and Germany; that a Bishop was merely an
officer; that the apostolical succession was probably false as a
fact--and, if a fact, implied nothing but historical continuity. Yet
the man who said these things had devoted his whole life to his
Master's service--thought of nothing else, and cared for nothing
else."*

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* Short Studies on Great Subjects, 4th series, p. 212.
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Froude had been taught by his brother, and his brother's set, to
believe that Dissenters were, morally and intellectually, the scum
of the earth. Here were men who, though not Dissenters themselves,
held doctrines practically undistinguishable from theirs, and yet
united the highest mental training with the service of God and the
imitation of Christ. There was in the Cleaver household none of that
reserve which the Tractarians inculcated in matters of religion. The
Christian standard was habitually held up as the guide of life and
conduct, an example to be always followed whatever the immediate
consequences that might ensue. Mr. Cleaver was a man of moderate
fortune, who could be hospitable without pinching, and he was
acquainted with the best Protestant society in Ireland. Public
affairs were discussed in his house with full knowledge, and without
the frivolity affected by public men. O'Connell was at that time
supreme in the government of Ireland, though his reign was drawing
to a close. The Whigs held off