them closely, are found to be ignorant of the French
language, to have read no philosophy between Aristotle and
Hobbes, and to issue above their signatures such errors of
plain dates and names as make one blush for English
scholarship and be glad that no foreigner takes our historical
school seriously.

There is always left to any man who deals with the writings
of Froude, a task impossible to complete but necessarily to be
attempted. He put himself forward, in a set attitude, to
combat and to destroy what he conceived to be--in the
moment of his attack--the creed of his countrymen. He was
so literary a man that he did this as much by accepting as by
denying, as much by dating from Elizabeth all we are as by
affirming unalterable material sequence and the falsity of
every transcendental acceptation. His time smelt him out
even when he flattered it most. Even when he wrote of the
Revenge the England of his day--luckily for him--thought
him an enemy.

Upon the main discussion of his life it is impossible to
pass a judgment, for the elements of that discussion are now
destroyed; the universities no longer pretend to believe.
And "free discussion" has become so free that the main
doctrines he assailed are no longer presented or read without
weariness in the class to which he appealed and from which
he sprang.

The sects, then, against which he set himself are dead:
but upon a much larger question which is permanent, and