came into office thousands of British settlers were digging for diamonds in Griqualand West, and its abandonment was impossible.  Brand himself did not wish to take the responsibility of governing it.  But he continued to press the case for compensation, and the British Government, which had forced independence upon the Boers, appeared in the invidious light of shirking responsibility while grasping at mineral wealth.  If it had not been for this untoward incident, the Dutch Republics would have been more favourable to Lord Carnarvon’s policy than Cape Colony was.  The Transvaal was imperfectly protected against the formidable power of the Zulus, and a general rising of blacks against whites was the real danger which threatened South Africa.

That peril, however, was felt more acutely in Natal than in Cape Colony.  The Cape had for two years enjoyed responsible government, and its first Prime Minister was John Charles Molteno.

Molteno was not in any other respect a remarkable man.  He had come to the post by adroit management of a miscellaneous community, comprising British, Dutch, and Kaffirs.  He was personally incorruptible, and he played the game according to the rules.  He would have called himself, and so far as his opportunities admitted, he was, a constitutional statesman, justly proud of the position to which his own qualities had raised him, and extremely jealous of interference Downing Street.  He had no responsibility, he was never tired of explaining, for the acquisition of the Diamond Fields, and he left the Colonial Office to settle that matter with President Brand.  Local politics were his business.  He did not look beyond the House of Assembly at Cape Town, which it was his duty to lead, and the Governor, Sir Henry Barkly, with whom he was on excellent terms.  His own origin, which was partly English and partly Italian, made it easy for him to be impartial between the two white races in South Africa.  For the Kaffirs he had no great tenderness.  They had votes, and if they chose to sell them for brandy that was their own affair.  Of what would now be called Imperialism Molteno had no trace.  He would support Federation when in his opinion it suited the interests of Cape Colony, and not an hour before.

Froude left Dartmouth in the Walmer Castle on the 23rd of August, 1874.  He occupied himself during the voyage partly in discussing the affairs of the Cape with his fellow-passengers, and partly in reading Greek.  The “Leaves from a South African Journal,” which close the third volume of Short Studies, describe his journey in his most agreeably colloquial style.  A piece of literary criticism adorns the entry for September 4th.  “I have been feeding hitherto on Greek plays:  this morning I took Homer instead, and the change is from a hot-house to the open air.  The Greek dramatists, even Aeschylus himself, are burdened with a painful consciousness of the problems of human life, with perplexed theories of Fate and Providence.  Homer is fresh, free, and salt as the ocean.”