ot intended for publication, the
light in which it appeared to him. "Intellectual and spiritual
affection being all which he had to give, Mrs. Carlyle naturally
looked on these at least as exclusively her own. She had once been
his idol, she was now a household drudge, and the imaginative homage
which had been once hers was given to another." Froude's posthumous
championship of Mrs. Carlyle may have led him to magnify unduly the
importance of domestic disagreements. But however that may be, the
opinions which he formed, and which Carlyle gave him the means of
forming, did not increase the attractions of the duty he had
undertaken to discharge.

Froude's own admiration of Carlyle was, it must always be
remembered, not in the least diminished by what he read. He still
thought him the greatest man of his age, and believed that his good
influence would expand with time. That there should be spots on the
sun did not disturb him, especially as moral perfection was the last
thing he had ever attributed to Carlyle. Meanwhile his position was
altered, and altered, as it seems, without his knowledge. Carlyle's
original executors were his brother, Dr. Carlyle, and John Forster.
Forster died in 1876, and by a codicil dated the 8th of November,
1878, Froude's name was put in the place of his, Sir James Stephen,
the eminent jurist, afterwards a judge of the High Court, being
added as a third. At that time Froude was engaged, to Carlyle's
knowledge, upon the first volume of the Life. At Carlyle's request
he had given up the editorship of Fraser's Magazine, which brought
him in a comfortable income of four hundred a year, and he had
wholly devoted himself to the service of his master. Carlyle
expected that he would soon follow his wife. He survived her fifteen
years, during which he wrote little, for his right hand was partly
paralysed, and continually meditated upon the future destiny of the
memorials entrusted to Froude.

In 1879 Dr. Carlyle died, leaving Froude and Stephen the sole
executors under the will. Late in the autumn of that year Carlyle
suddenly said to Froude, "When you have done with those papers of
mine, give them to Mary." Mary was his niece Mary Aitken, Mrs.
Alexander Carlyle, who had lived in Cheyne Row to take care of her
uncle since her aunt's death, and was married to her cousin. Carlyle
speaks of her with great affection in his will, "for the loving care
and unwearied patience and helpfulness she has shown to