should have had
during the whole year. Yet I knew how it would be. Daring as he is,
he could not venture on an entire defiance of public opinion.
Parliament of course would have to meet, and equally of course you
and Lord D. would have to come up. I conclude the object to be to
get up a Russian war after all. The stress laid by Lord Cranbrook on
the reception of the Russian Embassy as the point of the injury will
make it very difficult for the Russians to be neutral. If this is
what the Ministry really intend, they may have their majority in
Parliament docile, but I doubt whether they will have the country
with them. I am sure they will not if Hartington and Granville
support Lord Lawrence.

"I interpret it all as meaning that the Premier knows that his
policy has thoroughly broken down in Europe, and at all risks he
means to have another try in the East."

It was Froude's opinion, right or wrong, that Lord Beaconsfield
might have settled the Irish question if he had left the Eastern
question alone. He understood it, as some of his early speeches
show, and he might have "established a just Land Court with the
support of all the best land-owners in Ireland."* Why the Land Court
established by Gladstone in 1881 was unjust Froude did not explain.
Some of the best landlords, if not all, supported it, and it
relieved an intolerable situation.

--
* Table Talk of Shirley, p. 180.
--

CHAPTER VIII

FROUDE AND CARLYLE

When James Spedding introduced Froude to Carlyle he made
unconsciously an epoch in English literature. For though Froude was
incapable of merging himself in another man, as Spedding merged
himself in Bacon, he did more for the author of Sartor Resartus than
Spedding did for the author of the Novum Organum. Spedding's Bacon
is an impossible hero of unhistorical perfection. Froude's Carlyle,
like Boswell's Johnson, is a great man painted as he was. When the
original head master of Uppingham described his school as Eton
without its faults, there were those who felt for the first time
that there was something to be said for the faults of Eton. Carlyle
without his paradoxes and prejudices, his impetuous temper and his
unbridled tongue would be only half himself. If he were known only
through his books, the world would have missed acquaintance with
letters of singular beauty, and with the most humourous talker of
his age. He was one of two men, Newman being the other, whose
influence Froude felt through