est stories that ever was told. He heard
it, so he informs us, from Sir Arthur Helps, and reproduces it in
his own words.

"A Government had gone out; Lord Palmerston was forming a new
Ministry, and in a preliminary Council was arranging the composition
of it. He had filled up the other places. He was at a loss for a
Colonial Secretary. This name and that was suggested, and thrown
aside. At last he said, 'I suppose I must take the thing myself.
Come upstairs with me, Helps, when the Council is over. We will look
at the maps, and you shall show me where these places are.'"

If Froude's memory of this anecdote be accurate, Helps must, for
once, have been drawing upon his imagination. As Clerk of the
Council, he had no more to do with forming Cabinets than with
appointing bishops. Palmerston was never Colonial Secretary in his
life; and among his faults as a Minister, which were positive rather
than negative, ignorance of political geography was certainly not
included. Many people, however, especially the Tariff Reform League,
will consider that the passage which immediately succeeds proves
Froude to have been in advance of his age. For he argues that trade
follows the flag, because "our colonists take three times as much of
our productions in proportion to their number as foreigners take." A
tour through the Colonies for the purpose of conversing with their
most influential statesmen had long been one of his cherished plans.
Hitherto he had got no farther than the Cape, where, as we have
seen, he became entangled in South African politics, and had to
repeat his visit. Now he was bound for Australasia, and on the 6th
of December, 1884, he left Tilbury Docks, with his son Ashley, in an
Aberdeen packet of four thousand tons. His love of the sea,
Elizabethan in its intensity, was heightened by his enjoyment of
Greek literature, especially the Odyssey, which he considered ideal
reading for a ship, and, as it surely is, on ship or on shore, an
incomparable tale of adventure.

Before the end of the year Froude was at Cape Town, renewing his
acquaintance with familiar scenes. Many of his former friends were
dead, and his courteous enemy, now Sir John Molteno, had left Cape
Town as well as public life. The Prime Minister was Mr. Upington, a
clever lawyer, afterwards Sir Thomas Upington, and the chief topic
was Sir Charles Warren's expedition to Bechuanaland, which happily
did not end in war, as Upington apprehended that it wou