ain whether Patricius was not
a title, and whether any single apostle of that name had so much as
existed."

Froude's scepticism was too indiscriminate when it assailed the
existence of St. Patrick, which is not now doubted by scholars,
baseless as the Patrician legends may be. Colgan's Lives of Irish
Saints had taken him back to Ireland, that he might examine the
scenes described. He visited them under the best guidance; and
Petre, the learned historian of the Round Towers, showed him a host
of curious antiquities, including a utensil which had come to be
called the Crown of Brian Boru. Legendary history made no impression
upon Froude. The actual state of Ireland affected him with the
deepest interest. A population of eight millions, fed chiefly upon
potatoes, and multiplying like rabbits, light-hearted, reckless, and
generous, never grudged hospitality, nor troubled themselves about
paying their debts. Their kindness to strangers was unbounded. In
the wilds of Mayo Froude caught the smallpox, and was nursed with a
devotion which he always remembered, ungrateful as in some of his
writings about Ireland he may seem. After his recovery he wandered
about the coast, saw the station of Protestant missionaries at
Achill, and was rowed out to Clare Island, where a disabled galleon
from the Armada had been wrecked. His studies in hagiology led him
to consider the whole question of the miraculous, and he found it
impossible to work with Newman any more. A religion which rested
upon such stories as Father Colgan's was a religion nurtured in
lies.

All this, however, had nothing to do with the Church of England by
law established, and Froude was ordained deacon in 1845. The same
year Newman seceded, and was received into the Church of Rome. No
similar event, before or since, has excited such consternation and
alarm. So impartial an observer as Mr. Disraeli thought that the
Church of England did not in his time recover from the blow. We are
only concerned with it here as it affected Froude. It affected him
in a way unknown outside the family. Hurrell Froude, who abhorred
private judgment as a Protestant error, had told his brothers that
when they saw Newman and Keble disagree they might think for
themselves. He felt sure that he was thereby guarding them against
thinking for themselves at all. But now the event which he
considered impossible had happened. Newman had gone to Rome. Keble
remained faithful to the Church of his ba