and that ''tis to be as 'twas' in Parliament. If no way
can be found of giving effect to the feeling of which has been just
expressed, the old enemy will be back again stronger than ever. I,
for my small part, shall finally despair of Parliamentary
Government, and shall pray for a Chamberlain Dictatorship. I do not
think politicians know how slight the respect which is now generally
felt for Parliament, or how weary sensible people have grown of it
and its factions.

"We are very happy down here. We have lost the Molt, but have a very
tolerable substitute for it. The Halifaxes are at the Molt
themselves, and considering what I am, and that he is the President
of the Church Union, I think he and I are both astonished to find
how well we get on together. The Colonists come next week to
Plymouth. I have promised to meet them. Their dinner will be the
exact anniversary of the arrival of the Armada off the harbour. That
was the beginning of the English naval greatness and of the English
Colonial Empire. Think of poor Oceana--75,000 copies of it sold. It
stands for something that the English nation is interested in....
But I must not try your eyes any further."

It was in 1881 that Froude, whose connection with Fraser had ceased,
wrote for Good Words the series of papers on The Oxford Counter-
Reformation which are the best record hitherto published of his
college life.* I have already referred to the vivid picture of John
Henry Newman contained in one of them. On the 2nd of March, 1881,
the aged Cardinal, writing from the Birmingham Oratory, sent a
gracious message of acknowledgment. "My dear Anthony Froude," he
began, "I have seen some portions of what you have been writing
about me, and I cannot help sending you a line to thank you... I
thank you, not as being able to accept all you have said in praise
of me. Of course I can't. Nor again as if there may not be other
aspects of me which you cannot praise, and which you may in a coming
chapter of your publication find it a duty, whether I allow them or
not, to remark upon. But I write to thank you for such an evidence
of your affectionate feelings towards me, for which I was not
prepared, and which has touched me very much. May God's fullest
blessings be upon you, and give you all good. Yours affectionately,
John H. Cardinal Newman."

--
* Short Studies, fourth series, pp. 192-206.
--

Froude carefully kept this letter, and, remote as their opinions
were, he never va