ather a long essay
thereon, which was very little read and falls completely out of the
ordinary conception of such a book, but is distinguished by an
exceptionally good and scholarly style, as well as by views and
expressions of great originality. Many others must pass wholly unnoticed
that we may finish this chapter with one capital name.

One of the greatest historians of the century, except for one curious
and unfortunate defect, and (without any drawback) one of the greatest
writers of English prose during that century, was James Anthony Froude,
who was born at Dartington near Totnes in 1818, on 23rd April
(Shakespeare's birthday and St. George's Day), and died in 1894 at the
Molt near Salcombe in his native county. Mr. Froude (the youngest son of
the Archdeacon of Totnes and the brother of Richard Hurrell Froude who
played so remarkable a part in the Oxford Movement, and of William
Froude the distinguished naval engineer) was a Westminster boy, and went
to Oriel College, Oxford, afterwards obtaining a fellowship at Exeter.
Like his elder brother he engaged in the Tractarian Movement, and was
specially under the influence of Newman, taking orders in 1844. The
great convulsion, however, of Newman's secession sent him, not as it
sent some with Newman, but like Mark Pattison and a few more, into
scepticism if not exactly negation, on all religious matters. He put his
change of opinions (he had previously written under the pseudonym of
"Zeta" a novel called _Shadows of the Clouds_) into a book entitled _The
Nemesis of Faith_, published in 1849, resigned his fellowship, gave up
or lost (to his great good fortune) a post which had been offered him in
Tasmania, and betook himself to literature, being very much, except in
point of style, under the influence of Carlyle. He wrote for _Fraser_,
the _Westminster_, and other periodicals; but was not content with
fugitive compositions, and soon planned a _History of England from the
Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Armada_. The first volumes of this
appeared in 1856, and it was finished in 1869. Meanwhile Froude from
time to time collected his essays into volumes called _Short Studies_,
which contain some of his very best writing. His next large work was
_The English in Ireland_, which was published in three volumes
(1871-74). In 1874-75 Lord Carnarvon sent him on Government missions to
the Cape, an importation of a French practice into England which was not
very well justifie