t to his cloth, who appears as Parson Chowne in Blackmore's
once popular novel, The Maid of Sker. But the Archdeacon was a man
of blameless life, and not in the least like Parson Froude. A hard
rider and passionately fond of hunting, he was a good judge of a
horse and usually the best mounted man in the field. One of his
exploits as an undergraduate was to jump the turnpike gate on the
Abingdon road with pennies under his seat, between his knees and the
saddle, and between his feet and the stirrups, without dropping one.

Although he had been rather extravagant and something of a dandy, he
was able to say that he could account for every sixpence he spent
after the age of twenty-one. On leaving Oxford he settled down to
the life of a country parson with conscientious thoroughness, and
was reputed the best magistrate in the South Hams. Farming his own
glebe, as he did, with skill and knowledge, perpetually occupied, as
he was, with clerical or secular business, he found the Church of
England, not then disturbed by any wave of enthusiasm, at once
necessary and sufficient to his religious sense. His horror of
Nonconformists was such that he would not have a copy of The
Pilgrim's Progress in his house. He upheld the Bishop and all
established institutions, believing that the way to heaven was to
turn to the right and go straight on. There were many such
clergymen in his day.

In appearance he was a cold, hard, stern man, despising sentiment,
reticent and self-restrained. But beneath the surface there lay deep
emotions and an aesthetic sense, of which his drawings were the only
outward sign. To these sketches he himself attached no value. "You
can buy better at the nearest shop for sixpence," he would say, if
he heard them praised. Yet good judges of art compared them with the
early sketches of Turner, and Ruskin afterwards gave them
enthusiastic praise. Mr. Froude had married, when quite a young man,
Margaret Spedding, the daughter of an old college friend, from
Armathwaite in Cumberland. Her nephew is known as the prince of
Baconian scholars and the J. S. of Tennyson's poem. She was a woman
of great beauty, deeply religious, belonging to a family more
strongly given to letters and to science than the Froudes, whose
tastes were rather for the active life of sport and adventure. One
can imagine the Froudes of the sixteenth century manning the ships
of Queen Bess and sailing with Frobisher or Drake. For many years
Mrs. Frou