that they governed the country through the House of Commons.  He never realised, any more than Carlyle, the vast amount of practical administrative work which such a man as Gladstone achieved, or on the other hand the immense weight carried in Parliament by practical ability and experience, as distinguished from brilliancy and rhetoric.  The history which he liked, and to which he confined himself, was antecedent to the triumph of Parliament over the Crown.  Warren Hastings, he used to say, conquered India; Burke would have hanged him for doing it.  The House of Lords acquitted Hastings; and so far from criticising the doubtful policy of the war with France in 1793, Burke’s only complaint of Pitt was that he did not carry it on with sufficient vigour.  The distinction between talkers and doers is really fallacious.  Some speeches are actions.  Some actions are too trivial to deserve the name.  But if Froude was incapable of understanding Parliamentary government, he very seldom attempted to deal with it.  The English in Ireland is a rare and not a fortunate, exception.  The House of Tudor was far more congenial to him than either the House of Stuart or the House of Brunswick.

Froude delivered his Inaugural Lecture on the 27th of October, 1892.  The place was the Museum, which stands in the parks opposite Keble, and the attendance was very large.  In the history of Oxford there have been few more remarkable occasions.  Although the new Professor had made his name and writings familiar to the whole of the educated world, his immediate predecessor had vehemently denied his right to the name of historian, and had assured the public with all the emphasis which reiteration can give that Froude could not distinguish falsehood from truth.  If anything could have brought Freeman out of his grave, it would have been Froude’s appointment to succeed him.  It is the custom in an Inaugural Lecture to mention in eulogistic language the late occupant of the chair.  No man was less inclined to bear malice than Froude.  His disposition was placable, and his temperament calm.  Freeman had grossly and frequently insulted him without the faintest provocation.  But he had long since taken his revenge, such as it was, and he could afford to be generous now.  He discovered, with some ingenuity, a point of agreement in that Freeman, like himself, was a champion of classical education.  Therefore, “along with his asperities,” he had “strong masculine sense,” and had voted for compulsory Greek.  If the right of suffrage were restricted to men who knew Greek as well as Froude or Freeman, the decisions of Congregation at Oxford, and of the Senate at Cambridge, would command more respect.