de enlarged the circle of his
friends, Carlyle being the greatest and the chief. Among the
contributors to Fraser's Magazine those whom he knew best were the
late Sir John Skelton, "Shirley," and the present Sir Theodore
Martin, the biographer of the Prince Consort, whom some still prefer
to associate with those delightful parodies, the Bon Gaultier
Ballads. The enumeration of Froude's London acquaintances would be
merely a social chronicle, with the supplement of some names, such
as General Cluseret's, quite outside the ordinary groove. He could
get on with any one, and he was interested in every one who had
interesting qualities. After his second marriage his dinner-parties
in Onslow Gardens were famous for their brilliancy and charm. His
magnetic personality drew from people whatever they had, while his
ease of manner made them feel at home. It was perhaps because he
never pretended to know anything that only scholars realised how
much he knew, and that he seemed to be not so much a man of letters
as a man of the world. Of all the friends he made in later life
there was not one that he valued more highly than Lord Wolseley. "I
have been staying," he wrote to his daughter, from South Africa,
"with Sir Garnet Wolseley and his brilliant staff. It was worth a
voyage to South Africa to make so intimate an acquaintance with
him." After his second return from the Cape, when his social life in
London was taken up again, with his eldest daughter in her step-
mother's place, there were added to the military and naval officers
he had met, the Irish Protestants, who regarded him as their
champion, and the wide circle of his ordinary associates, an
Africander contingent, made up of all parties in that troubled area.
There were, in fact, few phases of human life with which Froude was
not familiar, from Devonshire fishermen to Cabinet Ministers.
Although he knew and admired Mr. Chamberlain, his greatest political
friends were Lord Carnarvon and Lord Derby, with whom he almost
invariably agreed. The man of science whom, after his own brother,
he knew best, was Tyndall. Men of letters were familiar to him in
every degree. Among the houses where he was a frequent and welcome
guest were Knowsley, Highclere, Tortworth, and Castle Howard. In his
own family there were troubles and bereavements. His eldest son, who
died before him, gave him much trouble and anxiety. His second
daughter died of consumption a few months after her stepmother,