haunt Music Halls and fall in love with actresses took the form,
in Froude's case, of a romantic devotion to the Deity and an
intense interest in the state of his own soul. He was obsessed by
the ideals of saintliness, and convinced of the supreme
importance of not eating too much. He kept a diary in which he
recorded his delinquencies, and they were many. 'I cannot say
much for myself today,' he writes on September 29th, 1826 (he was
twenty-three years old). 'I did not read the Psalms and Second
Lesson after breakfast, which I had neglected to do before,
though I had plenty of time on my hands. Would have liked to be
thought adventurous for a scramble I had at the Devil's Bridge.
Looked with greediness to see if there was a goose on the table
for dinner; and though what I ate was of the plainest sort, and I
took no variety, yet even this was partly the effect of accident,
and I certainly rather exceeded in quantity, as I was fuzzy and
sleepy after dinner.' 'I allowed myself to be disgusted, with --
's pomposity,' he writes a little later, 'also smiled at an
allusion in the Lessons to abstemiousness in eating. I hope not
from pride or vanity, but mistrust; it certainly was
unintentional.' And again, 'As to my meals, I can say that I was
always careful to see that no one else would take a thing before
I served myself; and I believe as to the kind of my food, a bit
of cold endings of a dab at breakfast, and a scrap of mackerel at
dinner, are the only things that diverged from the strict rule of
simplicity.' 'I am obliged to confess,' he notes, 'that in my
intercourse with the Supreme Being, I am be come more and more
sluggish.' And then he exclaims: 'Thine eye trieth my inward
parts, and knoweth my thoughts ... Oh that my ways were made so
direct that I might keep Thy statutes. I will walk in Thy
Commandments when Thou hast set my heart at liberty.'