How this fierce and turbulent people fought their way to world-wide empire
was a problem which Froude thought he was able to solve. It was, in the
main, because they broke down the power of the priests, and insisted on the
supremacy of state over Church. Therefore all his filial affection, his
patriotism, and his ecclesiastical prejudices were arrayed on the same
side. If history be an exact science, then Froude can lay no claim to the
title of historian. He was a brilliant advocate, a man of letters endowed
with a matchless style, writing of matters which interested him deeply, and
in the investigation of which he spent twenty years of his life. Froude
himself would have been the first to repudiate the idea that history is
philosophy teaching by examples, or that an historian has necessarily a
greater insight into the problems of the present than any other observant
student of affairs. "Gibbon," he once wrote, "believed that the era of
conquerors was at an end. Had he lived out the full life of man, he would
have seen Europe at the feet of Napoleon. But a few years ago we believed
the world had grown too civilised for war, and the Crystal Palace in Hyde
Park was to be the inauguration of a new era. Battles, bloody as
Napoleon's, are now the familiar tale of every day; and the arts which have
made the greatest progress are the arts of destruction."

It is absurd to attack Froude on the ground that he was biassed. No man has
ever yet written a living history without being biassed. Thucydides
detested the radicalism of Cleon as heartily as Gibbon hated the
Christianity of Rome. It was once the fashion of the Oxford school to decry
Froude as being unworthy of the name of historian. Stubbs, indeed, did pay
public tribute to Froude's "great work," but he stood almost alone of his
school. Freeman for many years pursued and persecuted Froude with a
persistent malevolence which happily has no parallel in the story of
English scholarship. It is not necessary in this place to do more than
refer to that unpleasant episode. Since the publication of the brilliant