the year before in the hope that
change of scene might help to re-settle his mind. On reading the
attacks in the newspapers they pusillanimously asked him to
withdraw, and he withdrew. A letter to Clough, dated the 6th of
March, 1849, explains his intellectual and material position at this
time in a vivid and striking manner.

"I admire Matt. to a very great extent, only I don't see what
business he has to parade his calmness, and lecture us on
resignation, when he has never known what a storm is, and doesn't
know what to resign himself to. I think he only knows the shady side
of nature out of books. Still I think his versifying, and generally
his aesthetic power is quite wonderful .... On the whole he shapes
better than you, I think, but you have marble to cut out, and he has
only clay .... Do you think that if the Council do ask me to give up
I might fairly ask Lord Brougham as their President to get me helped
instead to ever so poor an honest living in the Colonies? I can't
turn hack writer, and I must have something fixed to do. Congreve is
down-hearted about Oxford: not so I. I quite look to coming back in
a very few years."

The Archdeacon, conceiving that the best remedy for free thought was
short commons, stopped his son's allowance. Froude would have been
alone in the world, if the brave and generous Kingsley had not come
to his assistance. Like a true Christian, he invited Froude to his
house, and made him at home there. To appreciate the magnanimity of
this offer we must consider that Kinglsey was himself suspected of
being a heretic, and that his prominent association with Froude
brought him letters of remonstrance by every post. He said nothing
about them, and Froude, in perfect ignorance of what he was
inflicting upon his host, stayed two months with him at Ilfracombe
and Lynmouth. Yet Kingsley did not, and could not, agree with
Froude. He was a resolved, serious Christian, and never dreamt of
giving up his ministry. He did not in the least agree with Froude,
who made no impression upon him in argument. He acted from kindness,
and respect for integrity.

Froude, however, could not stay permanently with the Kingsleys. His
father would have nothing to do with him, and in his son's opinion
was right to leave him with the consequences of his own errors. But
the outcry against him had been so violent and excessive as to
provoke a reaction. Froude might be an "infidel," he was not a
criminal, and in resign