the tone of his writing or the value and intricacy of his
argument. They may be compared to those undignified
and valueless chips of conversational English that pop up
in the best rhetoric if it be the rhetoric of an enthusiastic
and wide man.

While, however, one is in the mood of criticism it is not
unjust to show what other lapses in him are connected
with this common sympathy of his and this very comprehension
of his class to which he owed his opportunity and
his effect.

Thus he is either so careless or so hurried as to use--
much too commonly--words which have lost all vitality,
and which are for the most part meaningless, but which go
the rounds still like shining flat sixpences worn smooth.
The word "practical" drops from his pen; he quotes "in a
glass darkly," and speaks of "a picture of human life"; the
walls of Oxford are "time-hallowed"; he enters a church
and finds in it "a dim religious light"; a man of Froude's
capacity has no right to find such a thing there. If he writes
the word "sin" the word "shame" comes tripping after.
It may be that he was a man readily caught by fatigue, or
it may bet it is more probable, that he thought it small
millinery to "travailler le verbe" At any rate the result
as a whole hangs to his identity of spirit with the thousands
for whom he wrote.

To this character of universality attach also faults not only
in his occasional choice of words but in his general style.