f the Colonial
Ministry. They may promise, but I will believe only when I see it
that a Cape Ministry and Legislature will oppose the Boers in
earnest. They will encourage us to entangle ourselves, as they did
with the Diamond Fields, and then leave us to get out of the mess as
we can. South Africa cannot be self-governed in connection with this
country, except with the good-will of the Dutch population. Enough
may have been done, however, to quiet Parliament (which knows
nothing about the matter) in the approaching Session--and that, I
suppose, is the chief consideration. Carnarvon writes to me
preliminary, I suppose, to some attack when Government meets. I have
told him exactly what I have told Lord D. I hope I may turn out
mistaken, but the course of things so far has generally confirmed my
opinion whenever I have seen my way to forming one. I shall be glad
to hear what you think about the book. From you I shall get the
friendliest judgment that the circumstances admit of, and if you are
dissatisfied I shall know what to look for from others. The last two
hundred pages are the most interesting. The drift of the whole is
that Carlyle was by far the most remarkable man of his time--that
five hundred years hence he will be the only one of us all whose
name will be so much as remembered, while perhaps he may be one who
will have reshaped in a permanent form the religious belief of
mankind. Therefore he ought to be known exactly as he was. The
argument will not be felt by those who disbelieve in his greatness,
and the idolaters--those who pretend to worship without believing-
will be savagest of all. Idols must be draped in fine clothes, and
are reduced to nothing by mere human garments."

Perhaps the fullest, and certainly the least reserved, account of
Froude's own feelings about the book is contained in a letter to
Mrs. Charles Kingsley:

"I tell Longmans to-day to send you the book. If you can find time,
I shall like to hear the independent impression it makes upon you.
Only remember this: that it was Carlyle's own determination (or at
least desire) to do justice to his wife, and to do public penance
himself--a desire which I think so noble as to obliterate in my own
mind the occasion there was for it. I have long known the worst, and
Charles knew it generally. We all knew it, and yet the more
intimately I knew Carlyle, the more I loved and admired him; and
some people, Lord Derby, for instance, after reading the L