ran up storey after storey, spouting out at the different landings as it rose.  It reached the roof with a spring, and the place was gone.  There was nothing to stop it.  Our people were sure that it would be another Chicago.  The night was fine and frosty, with a light north-easterly breeze against which the fire was advancing.  We stayed an hour or two.  There seemed no danger for Mr. Peabody’s bank.  He was evidently, however, extremely harassed and anxious, as he held the bonds of innumerable merchants whose property was being destroyed.  I thought I was in his way, and left him, and came home to tell the family what was going on.  After I left the fire travelled faster than ever.  Huge rolls of smoke swelled up fold after fold.  The under folds crimson and glowing yellow from the flames below, sparks flying up like rocket stars.  A petroleum store caught, and the flames ran about in rivers, and above all the steel blue moon shone through the rents of the rolling vapour, and the stars with an intensity of brilliant calm such as we never see in England.  It was a night to be eternally remembered.”

A great many Irish families were made homeless by this fire, and Froude subscribed seven hundred dollars for their relief, thereby encouraging the rumour that he was in the pay of the British Minister whom he disliked and distrusted most.  Froude’s final view of America and Americans was in some respects less favourable than his first impressions.  He was struck by the difference between their public and private treatment of himself, between their conversation and the articles in their press.  “From what I see of the Eastern States I do not anticipate any very great things as likely to come out of the Americans.  Their physical frames seem hung together rather than organically grown ....  They are generous with their money, have much tenderness and quiet good feeling; but the Anglo-Saxon power is running to seed, and I don’t think will revive.  Puritanism is dead, and the collected sternness of temperament which belonged to it is dead also.”

This language seems strange, written as it was only seven years after the great war.  Froude, however, considered that there was much hysterical passion in the policy of the North, and he shared Carlyle’s dislike of democratic institutions.  Moreover, he was disappointed with the result of his mission.  The case seemed so clear to him that he could not understand why it should seem less clear to others.  He believed that if the priests could have been driven out of Ireland by William of Orange, the more fanatical Catholics would have followed them, and Ireland would have become prosperous, contented, and loyal.  To an American Republican such ideas were as repugnant as they were to an Irish Catholic.  An American could understand the argument that Home Rule was impracticable, because a Federal Constitution did not apply to the circumstances of the United Kingdom.  He would not readily believe that the Irish were by nature