The position of the relative is often as slipshod as the
position of the qualicative; thus you will find upon page 37
that the pioneers "grayed out the channels, and at last paved
them with their bones, through which the commerce and
enterprise of England has flowed out of all the world." This
sentence is quite deplorable; it has a singular verb after two
nominatives, and is so framed that one might imagine the
commerce and enterprise of our beloved country to have flown
through those hollow interior channels, with which, I believe,
our larger bones are provided, and in which is to be discovered
that very excellent substance, marrow.

It is singular that, while these obvious errors have excited
so little comment, Froude should have been blamed so often
and by such different authorities for weaknesses of the pen
from which he did not suffer, or which, if he did suffer from
them, at least he had in common with every other writer
of our time and perhaps less than most.

Thus, as an historian he has been accused of two faults
which have been supposed by those who are ill acquainted
with the history of letters to be correlative: a straining
for effect and an inaccuracy of detail. There is not one of
his contemporaries who less forced himself in description
than Froude. Often in Green, very often in Freeman and
always in Carlyle you feel that your author is deliberately
exciting his mind and your own. Violent colours are chosen
and peculiar emphasis--from this Froude was free. He was
an historian.