f a House," who had been at Balliol when
Froude was at Oriel, died in the second year of Froude's
professorship, after seeing many of his pupils famous in the world.
He had lived through the great period of transition in which Oxford
passed from a monastery to a microcosm. The Act of 1854 had opened
the University to Dissenters, reserving fellowships and
scholarships, all places of honour and emolument, for members of the
Established Church. The Act of 1871 removed the test of
churchmanship for all such places, and for the higher degrees,
except theological professorships and degrees in divinity. The Act
of 1877 opened the Headships of the Colleges, and put an end to
prize Fellowships for life. The Provost of Oriel, then Vice-
Chancellor, was a layman. Marriage did not terminate a Fellowship,
which, unless it were connected with academic work, lasted for seven
years, and no longer. The old collegiate existence was at an end.
Many of the tutors were married, and lived in their own houses. When
Gladstone revisited Oxford in 1890, and occupied rooms in college as
an Honorary Fellow of All Souls, nothing pleased him less than the
number of women he encountered at every turn. They were not all the
wives and daughters of the dons, who in Gladstone's view had no more
right to such appendages than priests of the Roman Church; there
were also the students at the Ladies' Colleges, who were allowed to
compete for honours, though not to receive degrees.

--
* "My brother," Froude wrote to Lady Derby, "though his name was little
before the public, was well known to the Admiralty and indeed in every
dock-yard in Europe. He has contributed more than any man of his time
to the scientific understanding of ships and shipbuilding. His inner
life was still more remarkable. He resisted the influence of Newman
when all the rest of his family gave way, refusing to become a Catholic
when they went over, and keeping steadily to his own honest convictions.
To me he was ever the most affectionate of friends. The earliest
recollections of my life are bound up with him, and his death takes away
a large past of the little interest which remained to me in this most
uninteresting world. The loss to the Admiralty for the special work in
which he was engaged will be almost irreparable."
--

Froude, who brought his own daughters with him, entered easily into
the changed conditions. He was not given to lamentation over the
past, and if he regretted an