It was in 1881 that Froude, whose connection with Fraser had ceased, wrote for Good Words the series of papers on The Oxford Counter-Reformation which are the best record hitherto published of his college life.* I have already referred to the vivid picture of John Henry Newman contained in one of them.  On the 2nd of March, 1881, the aged Cardinal, writing from the Birmingham Oratory, sent a gracious message of acknowledgment.  “My dear Anthony Froude,” he began, “I have seen some portions of what you have been writing about me, and I cannot help sending you a line to thank you...  I thank you, not as being able to accept all you have said in praise of me.  Of course I can’t.  Nor again as if there may not be other aspects of me which you cannot praise, and which you may in a coming chapter of your publication find it a duty, whether I allow them or not, to remark upon.  But I write to thank you for such an evidence of your affectionate feelings towards me, for which I was not prepared, and which has touched me very much.  May God’s fullest blessings be upon you, and give you all good.  Yours affectionately, John H. Cardinal Newman.”

—­ * Short Studies, fourth series, pp. 192-206. —­

Froude carefully kept this letter, and, remote as their opinions were, he never varied in his loyal admiration of the illustrious Oratorian.  That admiration, however, was purely personal, and did not affect in any degree the staunchness of Froude’s principles.  In 1883 Protestant Germany celebrated the four hundredth anniversary of Luther’s birth, and Froude wrote for the occasion a short biography of the rebellious monk who changed the history of the world.  He founded on the larger Life by Julius Koestlin, which had then just appeared, this little book makes no pretence to original learning or research.  It is a polemical pamphlet by a master of English, and a fervent admirer of the illustrious Martin.  “When the German states revolted against the Roman hierarchy,” says Froude in his Preface, “we in England revolted also,” and Luther’s name was as familiar as Bunyan’s to the Protestant Churches of England.  The Catholic revival of which Froude had seen so much at Oxford was still in full swing.

“Nevertheless, we are still a Protestant nation, and the majority of us intend to remain Protestant.  If we are indifferent to our Smithfield and Oxford martyrs, we are not indifferent to the Reformation, and we can join with Germany in paying respect to the memory of a man to whom we also, in part, owe our deliverance.  Without Luther there would have been either no change in England in the sixteenth century, or a change purely political.  Luther’s was one of those great individualities which have modelled the history of mankind, and modelled it entirely for good.  He revived and maintained the spirit of piety and reverence in which, and by which alone, real progress is possible.”