it on board a ship,
the absence of dinner parties, the exchange of the table in the
close room for the open deck under an awning, and the ever-flowing
breeze which the motion of the vessel forbids to sink into a calm,
give vigour to the tired system, restore the conscious enjoyment of
elastic health, and even mock us for the moment with the belief that
age is an illusion, and that 'the wild freshness' of the morning of
life has not yet passed away for ever. Above our heads is the arch
of the sky, around us the ocean, rolling free and fresh as it rolled
a million years ago, and our spirits catch a contagion from the
elements. Our step on the boards recovers its buoyancy. We are
rocked to rest at night by a gentle movement which soothes you into
the dreamless sleep of childhood, and we wake with the certainty
that we are beyond the reach of the postman. We are shut off, in a
Catholic retreat, from the worries and anxieties of the world."

This is not the language of a man who ever suffered seriously from
sea-sickness, and Froude's face had an open-air look which never
suggested "the unexhilarating atmosphere of a library." But he was
of course a laborious student, and nothing refreshed him like a
voyage. On the yacht of his old friend Lord Ducie, as Enthusiastic a
sailor and fisherman as himself, he made several journeys to Norway,
and caught plenty of big salmon. He has done ample justice to these
expeditions in the last volume of his essays, which contains The
Spanish Story of the Armada. A country where the mountains are
impassable, and the fiords the only roads, just suited his taste. It
even inspired him with a poem, Rornsdal Fiord, which appeared in
Blackwood for April, 1883, and it gave him health, which is not
always, like poetry, a pure gift of nature.

The life of society, and of towns, never satisfied Froude. Apart
from his genius and his training, he was a country gentleman, and
felt most at home when he was out of doors.

From Panshanger he wrote to Lady Derby:

"How well I understand what you felt sitting on the top of the
Pyrenees. We men are but a sorry part of the creation. Now and then
there comes to us a breath out of another order of things; a sudden
perception--coming we cannot tell how--of the artificial and
contemptible existence we are all living; a longing to be out of it
and have done with it--by a pistol-shot if nothing else will do. I
continually wonder at myself for remaining in London wh