scribed as the faith that saved is the faith that
beyond all things and always truth is the most precious of
possessions, and truthfulness the most precious of qualities; that
when truth calls, whatever the consequence, a brave man is bound to
follow."*

--
* Short Studies, iii. 189.
--

Although Froude was probably happier at Oxford than he had been at
any time since 1874, the regulations of his professorship worried
him, as they had worried Stubbs and Freeman. They seemed to have
been drawn on the assumption that a Professor would evade his
duties, and behave like an idle undergraduate. Froude, on the
contrary, interpreted them in the sense most adverse to himself. The
authorities of the place, or some of them, would have had him spare
his pains, and colourably evade the statute by talking instead of
lecturing. But Froude was too conscientious to seek relief in this
way. Whatever he had to do he did thoroughly, conscientiously, and
as well as he could. There is no trace of senility in his
professorial utterances. On the contrary, they are full of life and
fire. Yet Froude was by no means entirely engrossed in his work. He
had time for hospitality, and for making friends with young men. He
loved his familiar surroundings, for nothing can vulgarise Oxford.
He found men who still read the classics as literature, not to convict
Aeschylus of violating Dawes's Canon, or to get loafers
through the schools. He was not in all respects, it must be
admitted, abreast of modern thought. His education had been
unscientific, and he cared no more for Darwin than Carlyle did. He
had learnt from his brother William, who died in 1879,* the scope
and tendency of modern experiments, and astronomical illustrations
are not uncommon in his writings. But the bent of his mind was in
other directions, and he had never been under the influence of
Spencer or of Mill. The Oxford which he left in 1849 was dominated
by Aristotle and Bishop Butler. He came back to find Butler
dethroned, and more modern philosophers established in his place.
Aristotle remained where he was, not the type and symbol of
universal knowledge, as Dante conceived him, but the groundwork upon
which all later systems had been built. Plato, without whom there
would have been no Aristotle, was more closely and reverently
studied than ever, partly no doubt through Jowett, and yet mainly
because no philosopher can ever get far away from him. Jowett
himself, the ideal "Head o