was a work of fiction, and he could not justly be held
responsible for the opinions of the characters. Expulsion was,
however, held out to him as the alternative of resignation.

--
* Dr. Richards.
--

"If the Rector will permit me," he wrote from Oxford to Clough,
"tomorrow I cease to be a Fellow of the College. But there is a
doubt if he will permit it, and will not rather try to send me out
in true heretic style. My book is therefore, as you may suppose,
out. I know little of what is said, but it sells fast, and is being
read, and is producing sorrow this time, I understand, as much as
anger, but the two feelings will speedily unite."

If he could have appealed to a court of law, the authorities would
probably have failed for want of evidence, and Froude would have
retained his Fellowship. But he was sensitive, and yielded to
pressure. He signed the paper presented to him as if he had been a
criminal, and shook the dust of the University from his feet. Within
ten years a new Rector, quite as orthodox as the old, had invited
him to replace his name on the books of the college. It was long,
however, before he returned to an Oxford where only the buildings
were the same. Twenty years from this date an atheistic treatise
might have been written with perfect impunity by any Fellow of any
college. Nobody would even have read it if atheism had been its only
recommendation. The wise indifference of the wise had relieved true
religion from the paralysis of official patronage. But in 1849 the
action of the Rector and Fellows was heartily applauded by the
Visitor, Bishop Phillpotts, the famous Henry of Exeter. Their
behaviour was conscientious, and Dr. Richards, the Rector, was a
model of dignified urbanity. It is unreasonable to blame men for not
being in advance of their age.

CHAPTER III

LIBERTY

Froude's position was now, from a worldly point of view, deplorable.
For the antagonism of High Churchmen he was of course prepared.
"Never mind," he wrote to Clough of The Nemesis, "if the Puseyites
hate it; they must fear it, and it will work in the mind they have
made sick." But he was also assailed in the Protestant press as an
awful example of what the Oxford Movement might engender. His book
was denounced on all sides, even by freethinkers, who regarded it as
a reproach to their cause. The professors of University College,
London, had appointed him to a mastership at Hobart Town in
Australia, for which he applied