ative artists could have
resisted as he did the temptation to draw a dazzling picture of
Mary's charms and accomplishments, scholarship and statesmanship,
beauty and wit. Froude felt of her as Jehu felt of Jezebel, that she
was the enemy of the people of God. So with his own contemporaries,
such as Carlyle's "copper captain," Louis Napoleon.

He was never dazzled by the blaze of the Tuileries and the glare of
temporary success. He might have said after Boileau, J' appelle un
chat un chat, et Louis un fripon.

The peculiarity of Froude's nature was to combine this firm
foundation with superficial layers of cynicism, paradox, and irony,
as in his apology for the rack, his character of Henry VIII., his
defence of Cranmer's churchmanship, and Parker's. He shared with
Carlyle the belief that conventional views were sham views, and
ought to be exposed. Ridicule, if not a test of truth, is at all
events a weapon against falsehood, and has done much to clear the
air of history. Froude's sense of humour was rather receptive than
expansive, and he did not often display it in his writings. Tristram
Shandy he knew almost by heart, and he never tired of Candide, or
Zadig.

Voltaire's wit and Sterne's humour have not in their own lines been
surpassed. But sure as Froude's taste was in such matters, he did
not himself enter the lists as a competitor. He was too much
occupied with his narrative, or his theory, as the case might be, to
spare time for such diversion by the way. He was too earnest to be
impartial.

Where is the impartial historian to be found? Macaulay said in
Hallam. The clerical editor of Bishop Stubbs's Letters thinks that
Hallam, who was an Erastian, had a violent prejudice against the
Church. His impartial historian is Stubbs, for the simple reason
that he agrees with him. Froude was for England against Rome and
Spain. He could oppose the foreign policy of an English Government
when he thought it wrong, as in the case of the Crimean War, and of
Disraeli's aggressive Imperialism in 1877. But the English cause in
the sixteenth century he regarded as national and religious, making
for freedom and independence of policy and thought. To be free, to
understand, to enjoy, said Thomas Hill Green, is the claim of the
modern spirit. Froude would not have admitted that man in the
philosophic sense was free, or that he could ever hope to understand
the ultimate causes of things. And, though no man was more capable
of enjo