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 ‘Literæ Humaniores’ and mathematics. He was elected to a fellowship at Oriel at Easter 1826, took his M.A. degree in 1827, and in the same year became tutor in his college, retaining the office until 1830. He was ordained deacon at Christmas 1828 by the Bishop of Oxford, and priest in 1829. In 1826 (the present Cardinal) Newman became tutor of Oriel, and there made an acquaintance with Froude, which ripened into a close and affectionate friendship about 1829. Newman, in his ‘Apologia,’ speaks of Froude's bold and logical intellect. He already detested the reformers, admired the church of Rome, accepted tradition ‘as a main instrument of religious teaching,’ and was ‘powerfully drawn to the mediæval church, but not to the primitive.’ He was ‘a high tory of the cavalier stamp,’ a man of strong classical tastes, and fond of historical inquiry, but ‘had no taste for theology as such.’ He became an influential member of the party afterwards known as the Oxford school, and had a strong influence upon its founders. In 1831 he showed symptoms of consumption, and passed the winter of 1832 in the south of Europe for the sake of his health. He was accompanied by his father, and for part of the time by Newman. He was ‘shocked by the degeneracy which he thought he saw in the catholics of Italy.’ At Rome he began with Newman to write the ‘Lyra Apostolica,’ which appeared in the ‘British Magazine.’ His contributions signed β are exceptionally beautiful. After his return in the summer of 1833, he sailed in November 1834 to the West Indies, where he stayed until the spring of 1835. His health was not really improved, and he died at his father's house 28 Feb. 1836. He contributed three of the ‘Tracts for the Times.’ Two volumes of ‘Remains’ published at the end of 1837 were prefaced by Newman and edited by [q. v.] The preface shows that although he hated ‘protestantism,’ he was still opposed to ‘Romanism.’ He was a ‘catholic without the popery, and a church of England man without the protestantism’ (Remains, i. 404). He was in fact at the stage reached by Newman at the same period. Two later volumes appeared in 1839. They show his strong prejudices more distinctly than the intellectual power which he undoubtedly possessed.

Mr. J. A. Froude says that he never saw any person ‘in whom the excellencies of intellect and character were combined in fuller measure’ (Nineteenth Century for April 1879).



FROUDE, WILLIAM (1810–1879), engineer and naval architect, fourth son of the Venerable Robert Hurrell Froude, archdeacon of Totnes and rector of Dartington and Denbury in Devonshire, was born at Dartington parsonage, 28 Nov. 1810. He was educated at Westminster School, and then matriculated from Oriel College, Oxford, on 23 Oct. 1828, being for some time a pupil of his elder brother, [q. v.] Here, although devoting much leisure to chemistry and mechanics, he took a first class in mathematical honours in 1832, his B.A. in the same year, and his M.A. in 1837. In the beginning of 1833 he became a pupil of Henry Robinson Palmer, vice-president of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and was by him employed on some of the surveys of the South-Eastern railway. In 1837 he joined the engineering staff of Isambard K. Brunel upon the Bristol and Exeter railway, where he had charge of the construction of the line between the Whiteball tunnel and Exeter. He evinced great attention to details, and in two elliptical skew-bridges introduced taper bricks so arranged as to make correct spiral courses, and it was while employed on this line that he propounded the ‘curve of adjustment.’ In the autumn of 1844 he was engaged on the survey of the Wilts, Somerset, and Weymouth railway, but shortly afterwards gave up the active pursuit of his profession in order to live at Dartington with his father, who was then in failing health. On the death of his father, in 1859, Froude left Dartington, and went to reside at Torbay, where in 1867 he built a house near Torquay, which he named Chelston Cross. As early as 1856 he had, at the request of Brunel, commenced an investigation into the laws of the motion of a ship among waves, which he continued at Torquay, and upon which he read a series of papers at the Institution of Naval Architects. He proved the mechanical possibility of that form of motion known as the trochoidal sea-wave. He also came to the conclusion that slow rolling ships are less likely to meet with waves which will cause them to roll, and that the rolling of a ship can be reduced by the means of a deep bilge-keel. The armour-clad and other ships of war of the British navy have been designed in accordance with this theory, so as to have steadiness at sea. In 1871 he demonstrated the effect of bilge-keels with a model of the Devastation, and in 1872 these keels were