which in a sort of groping way he sometimes handled,
something should be said here, which I think has never been
said before. He was perpetually upon the borderland of the
Catholic Church.

Between him and the Faith there stood no distance of space,
but rather a high thin wall; the high thin wall of his own
desperate conviction. If you will turn to page 209 of this
book you will see it said of the denial of the Sacrament
by the Reformers and of Ridley's dogma that it was bread
only "the commonsense of the country was of the same
opinion, and illusion was at an end." Froude knew that
the illusion was not at an end. He probably knew (for we
must continue to repeat that he was a most excellent historian)
that the "commonsense of the country" was, by the time
Ridley and the New English Church began denying the real
presence, and turning that denial into a dogma, profoundly
indifferent to all dogmas whatsoever. What "the common-sense
of the country" wanted was to keep out swarthy men,
chivalrous indeed but imperialists full of gold who owned
nearly all the earth, but who, they were determined, should
not own England.

Froude was fond of such assertions, his book is full of them,
and they are more than mere violence framed for combat;
they are in their curious way definite expressions of the man's
soul; for Froude was fond of that high thin wall, and liked
to build it higher. He was a dogmatic rationalist--one
hesitates to use a word which has been so portentously
misused. Renan before dying came out with one of his last