unreadable, or if printed, were unread. The results are with us to-day.

In such a time Froude maintained an opposing force, which was
not reforming nor constructive in any way, but which will obtain
the attention of the future historian, simply because it was an
opposition.

It was an opposition of manner rather than of matter. The matter
of it was common enough even in Froude's chief decade of power.
The cause to which he gave allegiance was already winning when he
proceeded to champion it, and many a better man, one or two greater
men, were saying the same things as he; but they said such things
in a fashion that suggested no violent effort nor any demand for
resistance: it was the peculiar virtue of Froude that he touched
nothing without the virile note of a challenge sounding throughout
his prose. On this account, though he will convince our posterity
even less than he does ourselves, the words of persuasion, the
writings themselves will remain: for he chose the hardest wood in
which to chisel, knowing the strength of his hand.

What was it in him which gave him that strength, and
which permitted him, in an age that would tolerate no formative
grasp upon itself, to achieve a permanent fame? I will not
reply to this question by pointing to the popularity
of his History of England; the essays that follow will
afford sufficient material to answer it. He produced the
effect he did and remained in the eminence to which he
had climbed, first because his manner of thought was rigid
and of a hard edge; secondly, because he could use that
steel tool of a brain in a fashion that was general; he could