h she received
the house in Cheyne Row after the death of her uncle John, who died
before her uncle Thomas.
--

Her recollection, however, must have been erroneous. For the bulk of
the papers had been in Froude's possession since the end of 1873, or
at latest the beginning of 1874, and were not in the drawers or
boxes which the keys would have opened. On the strength of her own
statement, which was never tested in a court of law and was
inconsistent with the clause in Carlyle's will leaving his
manuscripts to his brother John, Mrs. Carlyle demanded that Froude
should surrender the materials for his biography, and not complete
it. He put himself into the hands of his co-executor, who
successfully resisted the demand, and Froude, in accordance with
Carlyle's clearly expressed desire, kept the papers until he had
done with them. In a long and able letter to Froude himself, printed
for private circulation in 1886, Mr. Justice Stephen says, with
natural pride, "It was my whole object throughout to prevent a law-
suit for the determination of what I felt was a merely speculative
question, and to defeat the attempt made to prevent you from writing
Mr. Carlyle's life, and I am happy to say I succeeded." The public
will always be grateful to the Judge, for there was no one living
except Froude who had both the knowledge and the eloquence that
could have produced such a book as his. Of the Reminiscences Froude
wrote to Skelton, "To me in no one of his writings does he appear in
a more beautiful aspect; and so, I am still convinced, will all
mankind eventually think."

His own frame of mind at this period is vividly expressed in a
letter to Max Muller, dated the 8th of December, 1881. After some
references to Goethe's letters, and German copyright, he continues:

"So much ill will has been shown me in the case of other letters
that I walk as if on hot ashes, and often curse the day when I
undertook the business. I had intended, when I finished my English
history, to set myself quietly down to Charles the Fifth, and spend
the rest of my life on him. I might have been half through by this
time, and the world all in good humour with me. My ill star was
uppermost when I laid this aside. There are objections to every
course which I can follow. The arguments for and against were so
many and so strong that Carlyle himself could not decide what was to
be done, and left it to me. He could see all sides of the question.
Other people