while he was in South Africa alone. Otherwise, his relations with
his children were perfect and unbroken, for no father was more
beloved and adored. Indeed, all intelligent children delighted in
his company, because they could not help understanding him, and yet
he paid them the acceptable compliment of talking to them as if they
were grown up.

There is nothing in the world more evanescent than good
conversation. Froude was one of the best and most agreeable talkers
of his day. He could talk to old and young, to men, women, and
children, to Devonshire seamen or labourers, to the most highly
cultivated society of Oxford or London, with equal ease and equal
enjoyment. He never tried to monopolise the conversation, and yet
somehow the chief share fell naturally to him. If he were bored, he
could be as silent as the grave. But when his interest was roused,
and most things roused it, he always had something pointed and
forcible to say. He was not always a sympathetic hearer. Once he sat
between two extremely intellectual women who considered themselves
leaders of advanced thought. When they left the room after dinner he
turned to a friend of mine, and said simply, "I think all these
bigots ought to be burnt." Such deplorable intolerance was happily
rare. Less rare, perhaps, were his irresistible sense of the
ludicrous and irrepressible tendency to sarcasm. Of a famous
clergyman he said, "At least they have not put him into a bishop's
apron, the emblem of our first parents' shame." "What can education
do for a man," he once asked, "except enable him to tell a lie in
five ways instead of one?" As a rule, Froude, like most good
talkers, listened well, and responded readily. If he had not
Carlyle's rich, exuberant humour, he was also without the prophet's
leaning to dogmatism and anathema. Sardonic irony was his nearest
approach to an offensive weapon, and even in that he was sparing.
But he had a look which seemed to say, "Don't offer me any theories,
or creeds, or speculations, for I have tried them all."

Perhaps I may be permitted in this connection to describe my one and
only experience of Froude and his ways. It was after dinner, and the
talk had fallen into the hands, or the mouth, of an eminent
administrator, who seemed to be a pillar, a model of talent and
virtue. His language was copious, his subject "schoolmaster
Bishops," and the services they had rendered to the Church of
England. Bishop Blomfield, for example