, had procured the appointment
of the Ecclesiastical Commission. There might, for aught we knew, be
endless examples, and the prospect was appalling. The host was a
Roman Catholic, and the guests were not ecclesiastical. Froude came
to the rescue. In a gentle voice, and with the air of an anxious
inquirer, he asked whether Dr. Blomfield had happened to acquaint
the Commissioners with the nature and extent of his own emoluments.
Then, without pausing for a reply, he added, still gently, "Because
it always used to be said that there were only two persons who knew
what the Bishop of London's income was; himself and the devil." The
remark may not have been a new one. It was not offered as such, but
it served its purpose, for the interrupted lecture was never
resumed.

Froude's vast reading and his wide human experience enabled him to
hold his own in any company, but he never paraded his knowledge, or
lay in wait to trip people up. Although the prospect of going out
worried him, and his first impulse was to refuse an invitation, he
enjoyed society when he was in it, being neither vain nor shy. At
Oxford he could not dine out. Late hours interfered with his work.
But he was hospitable both to tutors and to undergraduates, liking
to show himself at home in the old place. Except for the failure of
his health, perhaps in spite of it, his enjoyment of his Oxford
professorship was unmixed. He did not hold it long enough to feel
the brevity of the generations which makes the real sadness of the
place. Many ghosts he must have seen, but he had reached
an age when men are prepared for them, and his academic career in
the forties had come to such an unfortunate end that comparison of
the past with the present can only have been cheerful and
honourable. He found a Provost of Oriel and a Rector of Exeter who
could read his books, and appreciate them, without prejudice against
the author. But indeed, though he was capable of being profoundly
bored, he was at his ease in the most diverse societies, and no form
of conversation not absolutely foolish came amiss to him. He had
read so many books, and seen so much of the world, he held such
strong opinions, and expressed them with such placid freedom, that
he never failed to command attention, or to deserve it. Contemptuous
enough, perhaps too contemptuous, of human frailties, he at least
knew how to make them entertaining, and his urbane irony dissolved
pretentious egoism.

It is a fami