Page:Studies of a Biographer 3.djvu/241

 The task brought him to the dilemma which had perplexed Gibbon a century before. Was he to accept or to reject the miraculous legends which gathered round the mediæval saints? If he rejected them, must he not reject also the miracles accepted by Protestants? Newman had plunged him into difficulties in which he sought the help of very different guides. He had begun to read Carlyle, and had been led to Goethe and to German literature and criticism. The discovery that Evangelicals could be as saint-like as Catholics had been followed by the discovery that men of the highest genius and character could be radically opposed to both.

Many of Froude's contemporaries went through a similar experience. They discovered that there was a world outside Oxford and that the 'Movement' was but a collateral result of great changes in the whole current of European thought. Froude's special characteristic seems to have been the desire to find some definite guide. He could not, like Clough, remain simply in suspense. He wanted a leader to take Newman's place. His state of mind is represented by the two early stories: the Shadows of the Clouds and the Nemesis of Faith. They shocked respectable people at the