purity, the bodies of each of us are transfigured after its
likeness."

There's a piece of historical prose which summarises,
teaches, and stamps itself finally upon the mind! Froude
saw that the Faith was the summit and the completion of
Rome. Had he written us a summary of the fourth and
fifth centuries--and had he written it just after reading some
dull fellow on the other side--what books we should have
had to show to the rival schools of the Continent!

Consider the sharp and almost unique judgment passed
upon Tacitus at the bottom of page 133 and the top of
page 134, or again, the excellent sub-ironic passages in which
he expresses the vast advantage of metaphysical debate:
which has all these qualities, that it is true, sober, exact,
and yet a piece of laughter and a contradiction of itself. It
is prose in three dimensions.

That pedantic charge of inaccuracy, with which I have
already dealt in another place, in connection with another
and perhaps a greater man, is not applicable to Froude. He
was hasty, and in his historical work the result certainly was
that he put down things upon insufficient evidence, or upon
evidence but half read; but even in his historical work (which
deals remember, with the most highly controversial part of
English history) he is as accurate as anybody else, except
perhaps Lingard. That the man was by nature accurate,
well read and of a good memory, appears continually throughout
this book, and the more widely one has read one's self,