Mrs. Kingsley did not go back, and Froude had his way.  Before the wedding, however, another and a novel experience awaited him.  His misfortunes aroused the interest of a rich manufacturer at Manchester, Mr. Darbishire, who offered him a resident tutorship, and would have taken him into his own firm, even, as it would seem, into his own family, if he had desired to become a man of business, and to live in a smoky town.  But Froude was engaged to be married, and had a passionate love of the country.  His keen, clear, rapid intelligence would probably have served him well in commercial affairs when once he had learnt to understand them.  He was reserved for a very different destiny, and he gratefully declined Mr. Darbishire’s offer.  Nevertheless, his stay at Manchester as private tutor had some share in his mental development.  He made acquaintance with interesting persons, such as Harriet Martineau, Geraldine Jewsbury, Mrs. Gaskell, and William Edward Forster, then known as a young Quaker who had devoted himself, in the true Quaker spirit of self-sacrifice, to relieving the sufferers from the Irish famine.  Besides Manchester friends, Froude imbibed Manchester principles.  He had been half inclined to sympathise with the socialism of Louis Blanc and other French revolutionists.  Manchester cured him.  He adopted the creed of individualism, private enterprise, no interference by Government, and free trade.  In these matters he did not, at that time, go with Carlyle, as in ecclesiastical matters he had not gone with Newman.  His mind was intensely practical, though in personal questions of self-interest he was careless, and even indifferent.  Henceforth he abandoned speculation, as well philosophical as theological, and reverted to the historical studies of his youth.  Philosophy at Oxford in those days meant Plato, Aristotle, and Bishop Butler.  Froude was a good Greek scholar, and he had the true Oxford reverence for Butler.  But he had not gone deeper into philosophy than his examinations and his pupils required.  He liked positive results, and metaphysicians always suggested to him the movements of a squirrel in a cage.

The alternative to business was literature.  Biographies of literary men, said Carlyle, are the most wretched documents in human history, except the Newgate Calendar.  But Carlyle said many things he did not believe, and this was probably one of them.  The truth is, that the literary profession, like the commercial, requires some little capital with which to set out, and Froude received this with his wife.  Besides it he had brilliant talents, unflagging industry, and powers of writing such as have seldom been given to any of the sons of men.  While at Manchester he composed The Cat’s Pilgrimage, the earliest of his Short Studies in date.  The moral of this fanciful fable is very like the moral of Candide.

The discontented cat, tired of her monotonously comfortable place on the hearthrug, goes out into the world, and gets nothing more than experience for her pains.  She finds the other animals occupied with their own concerns, and enjoying life because they do not go beyond them.  Not a very elevating paper, perhaps, but better than The Nemesis of Faith, and Froude’s last word on the subjects that had tormented his youth.