erence between right and wrong. This simple creed was sufficient
for him, as it has been sufficient for some of the greatest men who
ever lived. Epicureanism in all its forms was alien to his nature.
"It is not true," he said at St. Andrews, "that goodness is
synonymous with happiness. The most perfect being who ever trod the
soil of this planet was called the Man of Sorrows. If happiness means
absence of care and inexperience of painful emotion, the best
securities for it are a hard heart and a good digestion. If morality
has no better foundation than a tendency to promote happiness, its
sanction is but a feeble uncertainty." Remembering where he stood,
and speaking from the fulness of his mind, Froude exclaimed: "Norman
Leslie did not kill Cardinal Beaton down in the castle yonder because
he was a Catholic, but because he was a murderer. The Catholics chose
to add to their already incredible creed a fresh article, that they
were entitled to hang and burn those who differed from them; and in
this quarrel the Calvinists, Bible in hand, appealed to the God of
battles."

The importance of this striking Address is largely due to the fact
that it was composed immediately after the History had been finished,
and may be regarded as an epilogue. It breathes the spirit, though it
discards the trappings, of Puritanism and the Reformation. Luther
"was one of the grandest men that ever lived on earth. Never was any
one more loyal to the light that was in him, braver, truer, or wider-
minded in the noblest sense of the word." About Calvinism Froude
disagreed with Carlyle, who loved to use the old formulas, though he
certainly did not use them in the old sense. "It is astonishing to
find," Froude wrote to Skelton, "how little in ordinary life the
Calvinists talked or wrote about doctrine. The doctrine was never
more than the dress. The living creature was wholly moral and
political--so at least I think myself." Such language was almost
enough to bring John Knox out of his grave. Could he have heard it,
he would have felt that he was being confounded with Maitland, who
thought God "ane nursery bogill." But though the attempt to represent
Knox or Calvin as undogmatic may be fanciful, it is the purest,
noblest, and most permanent part of Calvinism that Froude invited the
students of St. Andrews to cherish and preserve.

CHAPTER V

FROUDE AND FREEMAN

Froude's reputation as an historian was seriously damaged for a time
by the