t quality of humor which gives a subtle sense of congruity, results
in an attempt to combine the elements of the tale and the didactic
society in impossible proportions. He is an essayist and historian,
not a novel-writer.

Froude stands before the English-reading public prominent in three
characteristics: First, as a technical prose artist, in which regard
he is entitled to be classed with Ruskin, Newman, and Pater; less
enthusiastic and elaborately ornamental than the first, less musically
and delicately fallacious than the second, and less self-conscious and
phrase-caressing than the third, but carrying a solider burden of
thought than all three. Second, as a historian of the modern school,
which aims by reading the original records to produce an independent
view of historical periods. Third, as the most clear-sighted and
broad-minded of those whose position near the centre of the Oxford
movement and intimacy with the principal actors gave them an insight
into its inner nature.

There can be but one opinion of Froude as a master of English. In some
of his early work there are traces of the manner of Macaulay in the
succession of short assertive sentences, most of which an ordinary
writer would group as limiting clauses about the main assertion. This
method gives a false appearance of vigor and definiteness; it makes
easy reading by relieving the mind from the necessity of weighing the
modifying propositions: but it is entirely unadapted to nice
modulations of thought. Froude very soon avoided the vices of
Macaulayism, and attained a narrative style which must be regarded as
the best in an age which has paid more attention than any other to the
art of telling a story. In descriptive historical narrative he is
unrivaled, because he is profoundly impressed not only with the
dramatic qualities but with the real significance of a scene; unlike
Macaulay, to whom the superficial theatrical elements appeal. A
reading of Macaulay's description of the trial of Warren Hastings, and
Froude's narrative of the killing of Thomas Becket or of the execution
of Mary Queen of Scots, will bring out at once Froude's radical
superiority in both conception and execution.

This is not the place to debate the question of Froude's historical
accuracy, further than to remark that he was an industrious reader of
historical documents, and by nature a seeker after the truth. If a
profound conviction of the harmfulness of ecclesiasticism colore