Page:Essays in Historical Criticism.djvu/314



lighten Americans on the Irish question. Later, he trav- elled in South Africa, Australia, and the West Indies. He was deeply interested in the preservation of the empire, and he lamented the apathy of the home government in regard to the welfare of the colonies, whose value he placed in the opportunities they offered for the expansion of the British people. His narratives of these voyages abound in glowing descriptions of nature, and melancholy reflections on the state of politics in democracies.

Like Carlyle, he was drawn to strong men, to the heroes ; and his biographies of Luther, Bunyan, and Carlyle, of Becket, Caesar, and Beaconsfield, are among the most suc- cessful and characteristic productions of his pen. Several volumes of essays, by the great range of their subjects and the never-failing interest imparted to them, bear testimony to the versatility of his mind.

In 1892 Froude was appointed Regius professor of history at Oxford, an academic honor which it has been customary to bestow upon men who would adorn the position. Actual teaching or lecturing forms a relatively small part of a Regius professor's duties, which lie rather in the field of research and authorship. Fronde's views of history differed widely from those of Stubbs and Freeman, his immediate predeces- sors. Freeman had for years been a relentless critic of his work, and had gone so far in one of his published lectures as to hold up Froude, in a thinly disguised description, in cutting terms, as an example of all that was objectionable in historical writing. Not unnaturally, lively protest was heard against the appointment. Yet Froude deserved the distinction better than three-quarters of his predecessors.

History for Froude was the drama of human life. Like the drama, its main value is not scientific but ethical. "It is a voice for ever sounding across the centuries the laws of right and wrong. . . . Justice and truth alone endure and live. Injustice and falsehood may be long-lived, but dooms- day comes at last to them, in French revolutions and other terrible ways." Another lesson is, that "we should draw