bserver,
or by some one who had a larger acquaintance with European
history than had he. I can imagine a French or an Irish
critic pointing to a mass of assertion with no corresponding
admission that it is assertion only: such a critic might quote
even from these few pages phrase after phrase in which
Froude poses as certain what are still largely matters of
debate. Thus upon page 144 he takes it for granted that
no miracles have been worked by contact with the bodies
of saints. He takes it for granted on page 161 that the
checking of monastic disorders, and the use of strong
language in connection with them, was peculiar to the
generation which saw at its close the dissolution of the
monasteries. He takes it for granted on page 125 that what
we call "manifestations" or what not,--spirit rappings,
table-turnings, and the rest--are deceptions of the senses to
which superstition alone would give credence.

He ridicules (upon p. 128) the tradition of St. Patrick which
all modern research has come to accept. He says downright
(upon pp. 186-187) that the Ancient world did not inquire
into the problem of evil. On p. 214 he will have it that the
ordinary man rejects, "without hesitation," the interference
of will with material causes. In other words, he asserts that
the ordinary man is a fatalist--for Froude knew very well
that between the fatalist and the believer in a possibility of
miracle there is no conceivable position. He will have it (on
p. 216) that a modern doctor always regards a "vision" as
an hallucination. On p. 217 he denies by implication the
stigmata of St. Francis--and so forth--one might multiply
the instances indefinitely. All Froude's works are full of
them, they are part and parcel of his method--but their
number is to no purport. One example may stand for all,
and their special value to our purpose is not that they are
mere assertions, but that they are assertions which Froude
must have known to be personal, disputable, and dogmatic.

He knew very well that the vast majority of mankind
accepted the virtue of relics, that intellects the equals of his
own rejected that determinism to which he was bound, and
that the Pagan world might be presented in a fashion very
different from his own. And in that perpetual--often gratuitous
--affirmation you have no sign of limitation in him but
rather of eagerness for battle.

It is an admirable fault or perhaps no fault at all, or if a
fault an appendage to t