During this year his brother Hurrell died, and the tragic extinction of that commanding spirit seemed a presage of his own early doom.  Two of his sisters, both lately married, died within a few months of Hurrell, and of each other.  The Archdeacon, incapable of expressing emotion, became more reserved than ever, and scarcely spoke at all.  Sadly was he disappointed in his children.  Most of them went out of the world long before him.  Not one of them distinguished himself in those regular professional courses which alone he understood as success.  Hurrell joined ardently, while his life was spared, in the effort to counteract the Reformation and Romanise the Church of England.  William, though he became a naval architect of the highest possible distinction, and performed invaluable services for his country, worked on his own account, and made his own experiments in his own fashion.  Anthony, too, took his line, and went his way, whither his genius led him, indifferent to the opinion of the world.  His had been a strange childhood, not without its redeeming features.  Left to himself, seeing his brothers and sisters die around him, expecting soon to follow them, the boy grew up stern, hardy, and self-reliant.  He was by no means a bookworm.  He had learned to ride in the best mode, by falling off, and had acquired a passion for fishing which lasted as long as his life.  There were few better yachtsmen in England than Froude, and he could manage a boat as well as any sailor in his native county.  His religious education, as he always said himself, was thoroughly wholesome and sound, consisting of morality and the Bible.  Sympathy no doubt he missed, and he used to regard the early death of his brother Robert as the loss of his best friend.  For his father’s character he had a profound admiration as an embodiment of all the manly virtues, stoical rather than Christian, never mawkish nor effeminate.

CHAPTER II

OXFORD

Westminster, it will have been seen, did less than nothing for Froude.  His progress there was no progress at all, but a movement backwards, physical and mental deterioration.  He recovered himself at home, his father’s coldness and unkindness notwithstanding.  But it was not until he went to Oxford that his real intellectual life began, and that he realised his own powers.  In October, 1836, four months after Hurrell’s death, he came into residence at Oriel.  That distinguished society was then at the climax of its fame; Dr. Hawkins was beginning his long career as Provost; Newman and Church were Fellows; the Oriel Common Room had a reputation unrivalled in Oxford, and was famous far beyond the precincts of the University.  But of these circumstances Froude thought little, or nothing.  He felt free.  For the first time in his life the means of social intercourse and enjoyment were at his disposal.  His internal weakness had been overcome, and his health,