cannot be accused of anti-ecclesiastical, or anti-theological prejudice, calls him a “grand, gross figure,” not to be tried and condemned by ordinary standards of private morals.  The only interest of his character now is its bearing upon the fate of England.  If the Pope, and not the king, had become head of the English Church, would it have been for the advantage of the English people?  By frankly taking the king’s side Froude made two different and influential sets of enemies, especially at Oxford.  High Churchmen, then and for the rest of his life, assailed him for hostility to “the Church,” forgetting or ignoring the fact that the Church of England is not the Church of Rome.  Liberals, on the other hand, mistook him for a friend of lawless despotism, as if Henry’s opponents had been constitutional statesmen, and not arrogant Churchmen, hating liberty even more than he did.

That Froude had no faith in modern Liberalism is true enough.  His political leader in 1856 was neither Palmerston nor Cobden, but Carlyle.  In 1529 he would have been a King’s man and not a Pope’s man, an Englishman first and a Churchman afterwards.  Lord Melbourne used to declare, in his paradoxical manner, that Henry viii. was the greatest man who ever lived, because he always had his own way.

Strength is not greatness, and Melbourne must not be taken literally.  What can be pleaded for Henry, without paradox and with truth, is that he imposed upon Catholic and Protestant alike the supremacy of the law.  Froude preached the subordination of the Church to the State; and while supporters of the voluntary principle regarded him with suspicion, adherents to the sacerdotal principle shrank from him with horror.

The reviews of Froude’s earliest volumes were mostly unfavourable.  The Times indeed was appreciative and sympathetic.  But The Christian Remembrancer was emphatic in its censure, and The Edinburgh Review, of which Henry Reeve had just become editor, was vehemently hostile.

After all, however, an author depends, not upon this party, nor upon that party, but upon the general public.  The public took to Froude’s History from the first.  They took to it because it interested them, and carried them on.  Paradoxical it might be.  Partial it might be.  Readable it undoubtedly was.  Parker’s confidence was more than justified.  The book sold as no history had sold except Gibbon’s and Macaulay’s.  There were no obscure, no ugly sentences.  The reader was carried down the stream with a motion all the pleasanter because it was barely perceptible.  The name of the author was in all mouths.  His old college perceived that he was a credit, not a disgrace to it, and the Rector of Exeter* courteously invited him to replace his name on the books.  The Committee of the Athenaeum elected him an honorary member of the Club.  Even the Archdeacon, now a very old man, discovered at last that his youngest son was an honour to the name of Froude.  He knew