mansion upon the beached verge of the salt flood." By
his own particular desire he was described on his tombstone as
Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, so deeply did he feel
the complete though tardy recognition of the place he had made for
himself among English historians. Otherwise he was the most
unassuming of men, simple and natural in manner, never putting
himself forward, patient under the most hostile criticism which did
not impugn his personal veracity. Although the malice of Freeman did
once provoke him to a retort the more deadly because it was
restrained, he suffered in silence all the detraction which followed
the reminiscences and the biography of Carlyle. His temper was
singularly placable, and he bore no malice. His father and his
eldest brother had not treated him wisely or kindly. But neither of
Hurrell Froude nor of the Archdeacon did he ever speak except with
admiration and respect. His early training hardened him, and perhaps
accounts for the indifference to cruelty which sometimes disfigures
his pages. He did not know what a mother's affection was before he
had a wife and children of his own. Before he became an honour to
his family he was regarded as a disgrace to it, and not until the
first two volumes of the History appeared did his father believe
that there was any good in him. Yet the Archdeacon was always his
ideal clergyman, and the Church of England as it stood before the
Oxford Movement was his model communion. With the Evangelical party,
represented to him by his Irish friend, Mr. Cleaver, he had
sympathetic relations, and practical, though not doctrinal,
agreement. His temporary leaning towards Tractarianism was no more
than personal admiration for Newman, and he took orders not because
he was a High Churchman, but because he was a Fellow. Yet it was in
some respects a fortunate accident, which, by shutting him out from
other professions, drove him into literature. Fiction he soon
learned to avoid, for his early experiments in it were failures, and
in later years his least successful book, with all its eloquence,
was The Two Chiefs of Dunboy. As an historical writer he has few
superiors, and his essays are among the most delightful in our
tongue. To analyse his style is as difficult as not to feel the
charm of it. It is as smooth as the motion of a ship sailing on a
calm sea, and yet it is never fiat nor tame.

Although Froude, like Newman, belonged to the Oriel school, he has