groundwork upon which all later systems had been built.  Plato, without whom there would have been no Aristotle, was more closely and reverently studied than ever, partly no doubt through Jowett, and yet mainly because no philosopher can ever get far away from him.  Jowett himself, the ideal “Head of a House,” who had been at Balliol when Froude was at Oriel, died in the second year of Froude’s professorship, after seeing many of his pupils famous in the world.  He had lived through the great period of transition in which Oxford passed from a monastery to a microcosm.  The Act of 1854 had opened the University to Dissenters, reserving fellowships and scholarships, all places of honour and emolument, for members of the Established Church.  The Act of 1871 removed the test of churchmanship for all such places, and for the higher degrees, except theological professorships and degrees in divinity.  The Act of 1877 opened the Headships of the Colleges, and put an end to prize Fellowships for life.  The Provost of Oriel, then Vice-Chancellor, was a layman.  Marriage did not terminate a Fellowship, which, unless it were connected with academic work, lasted for seven years, and no longer.  The old collegiate existence was at an end.  Many of the tutors were married, and lived in their own houses.  When Gladstone revisited Oxford in 1890, and occupied rooms in college as an Honorary Fellow of All Souls, nothing pleased him less than the number of women he encountered at every turn.  They were not all the wives and daughters of the dons, who in Gladstone’s view had no more right to such appendages than priests of the Roman Church; there were also the students at the Ladies’ Colleges, who were allowed to compete for honours, though not to receive degrees.

—­ * “My brother,” Froude wrote to Lady Derby, “though his name was little before the public, was well known to the Admiralty and indeed in every dock-yard in Europe.  He has contributed more than any man of his time to the scientific understanding of ships and shipbuilding.  His inner life was still more remarkable.  He resisted the influence of Newman when all the rest of his family gave way, refusing to become a Catholic when they went over, and keeping steadily to his own honest convictions.  To me he was ever the most affectionate of friends.  The earliest recollections of my life are bound up with him, and his death takes away a large past of the little interest which remained to me in this most uninteresting world.  The loss to the Admiralty for the special work in which he was engaged will be almost irreparable.” —­

Froude, who brought his own daughters with him, entered easily into the changed conditions.  He was not given to lamentation over the past, and if he regretted anything it was the want of Puritan earnestness, of serious purpose in life.  He had an instinctive sympathy with men of action, whether they were soldiers, sailors, or statesmen.  For mere talkers he had no respect at all, and he was under the mistaken impression