such as it was, and he could afford to be
generous now. He discovered, with some ingenuity, a point of
agreement in that Freeman, like himself, was a champion of classical
education. Therefore, "along with his asperities," he had "strong
masculine sense," and had voted for compulsory Greek. If the right
of suffrage were restricted to men who knew Greek as well as Froude
or Freeman, the decisions of Congregation at Oxford, and of the
Senate at Cambridge, would command more respect.

Froude must have been reminded by the obligatory reference to
Freeman that a man of seventy-four was succeeding a man of sixty-
nine. The Roman Cardinals were, he said, in the habit of electing an
aged Pontiff with the hope, not always fulfilled, that he would die
soon. He had no belief that such an expectation would be falsified
in his own case, and he undertook, with obvious sincerity, not to
hold the post for a single day after he had ceased to be capable of
efficiently discharging his functions. To history his own life had
been devoted, and it would indeed have been strange if he could not
give young men some help in reading it. His own great book might not
be officially recommended for the schools. It was unofficially
recommended by all lovers of good literature and sound learning.
Like most people who know the meaning of science and of history, he
denied that history was a science. There were no fixed and
ascertained principles by which the actions of men were determined.
There was no possibility of trying experiments. The late Mr. Buckle
had not displaced the methods of the older historians, nor founded a
system of his own. "I have no philosophy of history," added Froude,
who disbelieved in the universal applicability of general truths.
Here, perhaps, he is hardly just to himself. The introductory
chapter to his History of the Reformation, especially the impressive
contrast between modern and mediaeval England, is essentially
philosophical, so much so that one sees in it the student of
Thucydides, Tacitus, and Gibbon. History to Froude, like the world
to Jaques, was a stage, and all the men and women merely players.
But a lover of Goethe knows well enough that the drama can be
philosophical, and Shakespeare, the master of human nature, has
drawn nothing more impressive than the close of Wolsey's career.
"The history of mankind is the history of great men," was Carlyle's
motto, and Froude's. It is a noble one, and to discredit great m