No More Learning

WILLIAM P. TRENT, M. A. ,
Dean of the Department of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of
English and History,
UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH, Sewanee, Tenn.
PAUL SHOREY, PH. D. ,
Professor of Greek and Latin Literature,
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, Chicago, Ill.
WILLIAM T. HARRIS, LL. D. ,
United States Commissioner of Education,
BUREAU OF EDUCATION, Washington, D. C.
MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN, A. M. , LL. D. ,
Professor of Literature in the
CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA, Washington, D. C.


## p. 6048 (#18) ############################################

I


## p. 6049 (#19) ############################################

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
TABLE OF CONTENTS
VOL. XI
BY CHARLES FREDERICK JOHNSON
The Growth of England's Navy (English Seamen in the
Sixteenth Century')
The Death of Colonel Goring (Two Chiefs of Dunboy')
Scientific Method Applied to History (Short Studies on
Great Subjects')
HENRY B. FULLER
LIVED
1818-1894
The Death of Thomas Becket (same)
Character of Henry VIII. (History of England')
On a siding at a Railway Station (Short Studies on Great
Subjects')
1859-
At the Head of the March (With the Procession')
THOMAS FULLER
SARAH MARGARET FULLER (Marchioness Ossoli)
George Sand ('Memoirs')
Americans Abroad in Europe (At Home and Abroad')
A Character Sketch of Carlyle (Memoirs')
1810-1850
London (The Worthies of England')
Miscellaneous Sayings
1608-1661
The King's Children (The Worthies of England')
A Learned Lady (same)
Henry de Essex, Standard-Bearer to Henry II. (same)
The Good Schoolmaster (The Holy and Profane State')
On Books (same)
PAGE
6059
6101
6119
6129


## p. 6050 (#20) ############################################

ÉMILE GABORIAU
BENITO PEREZ GALDÓS
The Impostor and the Banker's Wife: The Robbery ('File
No. 113')
M. Lecoq's System (same)
FRANCIS GALTON
The First Night of a Famous Play (The Court of Charles
IV. ')
ARNE GARBORG
vi
Doña Perfecta's Daughter ('Doña Perfecta')
Above Stairs in a Royal Palace (La de Bringas')
BY WILLIAM HENRY BISHOP
HAMLIN GARLAND
LIVED
1835-1873
The Comparative Worth of Different Races (Hereditary
Genius')
ELIZABETH STEVENSON GASKELL
Our Society ('Cranford')
Visiting (same)
1845-
THEOPHILE GAUTIER
The Conflict of the Creeds (A Freethinker')
BY ROBERT SANDERSON
From The Marsh'
From The Dragon-Fly'
The Doves
The Pot of Flowers
1822-
A Summer Mood (Prairie Songs')
A Storm on Lake Michigan ('Rose of Dutcher's Coolly')
Prayer
The Poet and the Crowd
The First Smile of Spring
The Veterans (The Old Guard')
1851-
1860-
1810-1865
The Entry of Pharaoh into Thebes (The Romance of a
Mummy')
1811-1872
PAGE
6137
6153
6174
6185
6195
6205
6221


## p. 6051 (#21) ############################################

vii
JOHN GAY
EMANUEL VON GEIBEL
The Hare and Many Friends (Fables')
The Sick Man and the Angel (same)
The Juggler (same)
Sweet William's Farewell to Black-Eyed Susan
From What D'ye Call It? '
See'st Thou the Sea?
As it will Happen
Gondoliera
The Woodland
Onward
At Last the Daylight Fadeth
GESTA ROMANORUM
EDWARD GIBBON
AULUS GELLIUS
Second Century A. D.
From Attic Nights'; Origin and Plan of the Book; The
Vestal Virgins; The Secrets of the Senate; Plutarch
and his Slave: Discussion on One of Solon's Laws;
The Nature of Sight; Earliest Libraries; Realistic
Acting; The Athlete's End
·
Death of Julian
Fall of Rome
Silk
LIVED
1685-1732
Theodosius the Emperoure
Moralite
Ancelmus the Emperour
Moralite
How an Anchoress was Tempted by the Devil
Zenobia
Foundation of Constantinople
Character of Constantine
BY W. E. H. LECKY
1815-1884
1737-1794
Mahomet's Death and Character
The Alexandrian Library
Final Ruin of Rome
All from the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire>
PAGE
6237
6248
6253
6261
6271


## p. 6052 (#22) ############################################

WILLIAM SCHWENCK GILBERT
Captain Reece
The Yarn of the Nancy Bell
The Bishop of Rum-ti-foo
Gentle Alice Brown
The Captain and the Mermaids
RICHARD WATSON GILDER
All from the Bab Ballads'
Two Songs from The New Day'
"Rose-Dark the Solemn Sunset »
GIUSEPPE GIUSTI
The Celestial Passion
Non Sine Dolore
On the Life Mask of Abraham Lincoln
From The Great Remembrance'
Lullaby (Gingillino')
The Steam Guillotine
viii
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
Macaulay (Gleanings of Past Years')
EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN
GOETHE
BY EDWARD DOWDEN
LIVED
The Indenture (same)
The Harper's Songs (same)
Mignon's Song (same)
Philina’s Song (same)
Prometheus
Wanderer's Night Songs
1836-
1844-
1809-1850
1809-
1831-
6373
The Duty of Criticism in a Democracy (Problems of
Modern Democracy')
From 'Faust,' Shelley's Translation
Scenes from 'Faust,' Bayard Taylor's Translation
Mignon's Love and Longing (Wilhelm Meister's Appren-
ticeship')
Wilhelm Meister's Introduction to Shakespeare (same)
Wilhelm Meister's Analysis of Hamlet (same)
1749-1832
PAGE
6333
6347
6355
. 6359
6385


## p. 6053 (#23) ############################################

ix
GOETHE-Continued:
The Elfin-King
From The Wanderer's Storm Song'
The Godlike
Solitude
Ergo Bibamus!
Alexis and Dora
Maxims and Reflections
Nature
NIKOLAI VASILIEVITCH GOGOL
CARLO GOLDONI
From The Inspector'
Old-Fashioned Gentry (Mirgorod ')
BY ISABEL F. HAPGOOD
1809-1852
Oblómof
LIVED
1707-1793
BY WILLIAM CRANSTON LAWTON
First Love and Parting (Memoirs of Carlo Goldoni')
The Origin of Masks in the Italian Comedy (same)
Purists and Pedantry (same)
A Poet's Old Age (same)
The Café
MEIR AAREN GOLDSCHMIDT
1819-1887
Assar and Mirjam (Love Stories from Many Countries')
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
IVAN ALEKSANDROVITCH GONCHARÓF
BY CHARLES MILLS GAYLEY
1728-1774
The Vicar's Family Become Ambitious (The Vicar of
Wakefield')
New Misfortunes: But Offenses are Easily Pardoned Where
There is Love at Bottom (same)
Pictures from The Deserted Village'
Contrasted National Types (The Traveller')
1812-
BY NATHAN HASKELL DOLE
PAGE
6455
6475
6493
6501
6533


## p. 6054 (#24) ############################################

EDMUND GOSSE
THE BROTHERS DE GONCOURT
Edmond 1822-1896
Jules 1830-1870
Two Famous Men (Journal of the De Goncourts')
The Suicide (Sister Philomène ')
The Awakening (Renée Mauperin')
February in Rome
Desiderium
Lying in the Grass
RUDOLF VON GOTTSCHALL
Heinrich Heine (Portraits and Studies')
JOHN GOWER
X
Petronella (Confessio Amantis')
ULYSSES S. GRANT
HENRY GRATTAN
BY HAMLIN GARLAND
A Texan Experience (same)
The Surrender of General Lee (same)
THOMAS GRAY
LIVED
1849-
Early Life (Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant')
Grant's Courtship (same)
1823-
Elegy Written in a Country Church-yard
Ode on the Spring
On a Distant Prospect of Eton College
The Bard
1325? -1408
1822-1885
On the Character of Chatham
Of the Injustice of Disqualification of Catholics (Speech
in Parliament)
On the Downfall of Bonaparte (Speech in Parliament)
1746-1820
1716-1771
BY GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP
PAGE
6549
6565
6571
6579
6593
6615
6623


## p. 6055 (#25) ############################################

xi
THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY
BY TALCOTT WILLIAMS
On the Athenian Dead at Platæa (Simonides); On the
Lacedæmonian Dead at Platæa (Simonides); On a
Sleeping Satyr (Plato); A Poet's Epitaph (Simmias of
Thebes); Worship in Spring (Theætetus); Spring on
the Coast (Leonidas of Tarentum); A Young Hero's
Epitaph (Dioscorides); Love (Posidippus); Sorrow's
Barren Grave (Heracleitus); To a Coy Maiden (Ascle-
piades); The Emptied Quiver (Mnesalcus); the Tale
of Troy (Alpheus); Heaven Hath its Stars (Marcus
Argentarius); Pan of the Sea-Cliff (Archias); Ana-
creon's Grave (Antipater of Sidon); Rest at Noon
(Meleager); "In the Spring a Young Man's Fancy"
(Meleager); Meleager's Own Epitaph (Meleager); Epi-
logue (Philodemus); Doctor and Divinity (Nicarchus);
Love's Immortality (Strato); As the Flowers of the
Field (Strato); Summer Sailing (Antiphilus); The Great
Mysteries (Crinagoras); To Priapus of the Shore
(Mæcius); The Common Lot (Ammianus); "To-morrow,
and To-morrow" (Macedonius); The Palace Garden
(Arabius); The Young Wife (Julianus Ægyptius); A
Nameless Grave (Paulus Silentiarius); Resignation
(Joannes Barbucallus); The House of the Righteous
(Macedonius); Love's Ferriage (Agathias); On a Fowler
(Isidorus). Anonymous: Youth and Riches; The Sing-
ing Reed; First Love again Remembered; Slave and
Philosopher; Good-by to Childhood; Wishing; Hope
and Experience; The Service of God; The Pure in
Heart; The Water of Purity; Rose and Thorn; A
Life's Wandering
PAGE
6637


## p. 6056 (#26) ############################################



## p. 6057 (#27) ############################################

LIST OF PORTRAITS
IN VOL. XI
James Anthony Froude
Margaret Fuller
Thomas Fuller
Hamlin Garland
Elizabeth Stevenson Gaskell
Théophile Gautier
John Gay
Emanuel von Geibel
Edward Gibbon
William Schwenck Gilbert
Richard Watson Gilder
William Ewart Gladstone
Edwin Lawrence Godkin
Johann Wolfgang Goethe
Nikolai Vasilievitch Gogol
Carlo Goldoni
Meïr Aaren Goldschmidt
Oliver Goldsmith
Ivan Aleksandrovitch Goncharóf
Edmond de Goncourt
Rudolf von Gottschall
John Gower
Ulysses S. Grant
Henry Grattan
Thomas Gray
Vignette
Vignette
Vignette
Vignette
Vignette
Vignette
Vignette
Vignette
Full page
Vignette
Vignette
Full page
Vignette
Full page
Vignette
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Vignette
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Vignette
Vignette
Vignette
Vignette
Full page
Vignette
Full page


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1


## p. 6059 (#29) ############################################

6059
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
(1818-1894)
BY CHARLES FREDERICK JOHNSON
AMES ANTHONY FROUDE, English historian and essayist, was
born April 23d, 1818, and died October 20th, 1894. His
father was a clergyman, and the son was sent to Westmin-
ster School and to Oriel College, Oxford. In 1842 he became a fellow
of Exeter, and two years later he was ordained a deacon; an office
which he did not formally lay down until many years later, although
his earliest publications, Shadows of the Clouds' and 'Nemesis of
Faith,' showed that he had come to hold - and what perhaps is more
to the point, dared to express, - views hardly
compatible with the character of a docile
and unreasoning neophyte.

J. A. FROUDE
These books were severely censured by
the authorities, and cost him-to the great
benefit of the world-an appointment he
had received of teacher in Tasmania. He
resigned his fellowship and took up the pro-
fession of letters, writing much for Fraser
and the Westminster, and becoming for a
short period the editor of the former. His
magnum opus is his 'History of England from
the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the
Spanish Armada,' in twelve volumes, from
1856 to 1870. His other principal publica-
tions are The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century' (1874);
'Cæsar (1879); 'Bunyan 1880); Thomas Carlyle (first forty years of
his life) (1882); Life in London' (1884); Short Studies on Great
Subjects (1882, four series); The Two Chiefs of Dunboy' (1889);
'The English in the West Indies (1889); The Divorce of Catharine
of Aragon' (1892); 'The Life and Letters of Erasmus' (1892); English
Seamen in the Sixteenth Century' (1892); and 'The Council of Trent. '
'Shadows of the Clouds,' 'The Nemesis of Faith,' and 'The Two
Chiefs of Dunboy' are in the form of fiction; and though they -
especially the last-contain some charming descriptive passages, and
evince some of Froude's power of character sketching, they serve on
the whole to prove that he was not a novelist. The fortunes of his


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6060
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
group of people are of less absorbing interest to him than questions
of social and racial ethics. There is nothing more annoying than to
have an essayist stand behind a story-teller and interrupt him from
time to time with acute philosophical comments on ultimate causes.
The characters of Morty and Sylvester Sullivan are admirably con-
trasted Celtic types, but both they and the English Colonel Goring
are a trifle stagy and stiff in their joints. The murders of the two
chiefs, Morty Sullivan and Colonel Goring, are dramatically told; but
Froude's deficient sense of humor, at least of that quality of humor
which gives a subtle sense of congruity, results in an attempt to com-
bine the elements of the tale and the didactic society in impossible
proportions. He is an essayist and historian, not a novel-writer.
Froude stands before the English-reading public prominent in
three characteristics: First, as a technical prose artist, in which re-
gard he is entitled to be classed with Ruskin, Newman, and Pater;
less enthusiastic and elaborately ornamental than the first, less
musically and delicately fallacious than the second, and less self-
conscious and phrase-caressing than the third, but carrying a solider
burden of thought than all three. Second, as a historian of the mod-
ern school, which aims by reading the original records to produce
an independent view of historical periods. Third, as the most clear-
sighted and broad-minded of those whose position near the centre of
the Oxford movement and intimacy with the principal actors gave
them an insight into its inner nature.
There can be but one opinion of Froude as a master of English.
In some of his early work there are traces of the manner of Macau-
lay in the succession of short assertive sentences, most of which an
ordinary writer would group as limiting clauses about the main asser-
tion. This method gives a false appearance of vigor and definiteness;
it makes easy reading by relieving the mind from the necessity of
weighing the modifying propositions: but it is entirely unadapted to
nice modulations of thought. Froude very soon avoided the vices of
Macaulayism, and attained a narrative style which must be regarded
as the best in an age which has paid more attention than any other
to the art of telling a story. In descriptive historical narrative he is
unrivaled, because he is profoundly impressed not only with the dra-
matic qualities but with the real significance of a scene; unlike Macau-
lay, to whom the superficial theatrical elements appeal. A reading
of Macaulay's description of the trial of Warren Hastings, and
Froude's narrative of the killing of Thomas Becket or of the execu-
tion of Mary Queen of Scots, will bring out at once Froude's radical
superiority in both conception and execution.
This is not the place to debate the question of Froude's historical
accuracy, further than to remark that he was an industrious reader


## p. 6061 (#31) ############################################

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6061
If a
of historical documents, and by nature a seeker after the truth.
profound conviction of the harmfulness of ecclesiasticism colored the
light with which he illuminated the records of the past, we must
remember that history is at best largely the impressions of historians;
and that if it be true that Froude does present one side, it is the
side on which the warnings to posterity are most distinctly inscribed.
A reading of the controversy between Froude and Freeman in the
calmer light of the present leads to the conclusion that the suppressio
veri with which Froude was charged is not a suggestio falsi, but an
artistic selection of the characteristic. He felt a certain contempt for
the minute and meaningless fidelity to the record, which is not writ-
ing history but editing documents. He possessed, too, among his
other literary powers, the rare one of being able to individualize the
man whose life he studies and of presenting the character so as to be
consistent and human. This power fills his history and sketch with
rare personalities. Thomas Becket, Henry III. , Henry VIII. , Queen
Catharine, Mary Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth, are more than his-
torical portraits in the ordinary sense: they are conceptions of indi-
viduals, vivified by the artistic sense. Whether or not they are true
to the originals as reflected in the contemporary documents, they are
at least human possibilities, and therefore truer than the distorted
automata that lie in state on the pages of some historians. A human
character is so exceedingly complex and so delicately balanced with
contradictory elements, that it is probable that no two persons ever
estimate it exactly alike. Besides, prominent historical personages
become in the popular imagination invested with exaggerated attri-
butes, and it is not likely that men will ever agree even as to which
of them was the hero and which the villain of the drama. It was to
be expected that Froude should be violently assailed by those who
accepted a traditional view of Henry VIII. and of Mary. It was
inevitable that he should differ from them, because he had more than
a view: he had a conception. His historical personages are certainly
possibilities, because they are human, and the traditional figures are
either monsters or saints; and humanity—at least Teutonic humanity
does not produce unadulterated saints nor unrelieved monsters.
While Froude's historical work has been criticized for lack of
minute accuracy in details, his books on Carlyle have been criticized
for the opposite fault of quoting too fully and literally; from letters
and journals, matter never intended for the public, and of a nature
not only to wound living persons but to create an erroneous impres-
sion of the writer. The habit of expressing himself in pithy and
pungent personalities seems to have been with Carlyle a sort of intel-
lectual exercise, and should not necessarily be taken as an index of
morose ill-temper. A very delicate literary tact was necessary to his


## p. 6062 (#32) ############################################

6062
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
literary executor, in selecting from the matter put in his hands that
which would combine to make a true picture of a crude and power-
ful genius without making him appear to the ordinary reader a
selfish, willful man. Froude's idea of the duty of an editor of con-
temporary biography seems to have been that it was limited to care-
ful publication of all the available material as mémoires pour servir.
Such miscellaneous printing may in the end serve truth, but at the
time it arouses resentment. It resulted, however, in the production
of a book far preferable to the non-committal, evasive, destructively
laudatory biography of a public man, of which every year brings a
new specimen. It is at least honest, if not tactful.
Froude's early connection with the Oxford movement and his work
on the Lives of the Saints first called his attention to the study of
historical documents, and to the large amount of fiction with which
truth is diluted in them. His further researches among the authori-
ties recently made accessible, for the history of the destruction of the
monasteries, impressed on him the fact that an assumption of spirit-
ual authority is as dangerous to those who assume it as to those over
whom it is assumed, exactly as physical slavery is in the end as
harmful to the masters as it is to the slaves. He saw that ecclesias-
ticism had been profoundly hostile to morals, and he judged the pres-
ent by the past till he really believed that the precious fruits of the
Reformation would be lost if the ritualists obtained control of the
Church. He persuaded himself that under such influence —
«Civilization would ebb, the great moral lights be extinguished,
Over the world would creep an unintelligent darkness
Under which men would be portioned anew 'twixt the priest and the soldier. »
It is perhaps too much to expect of a man of the imaginative
temperament of Froude, to whom the abominations of the Church
from the twelfth to the sixteenth century were as real as if he had
witnessed them, to retain judicial calmness under the vituperation
with which he was assailed; but his profound distrust of the medieval
Church certainly does give an air of partisanship to his strictures
on its modern ineffectual revival. He forgot that great principles
of justice and toleration are now so embodied in law and fixed in
the hearts of the English-speaking people that society is protected,
and the evils of spiritual tyranny are restricted to the few who are
willing to abase their intellects to it; that the corroding evil of
conventual life is minimized by healthy outside influences; and that
the most advanced modern ritualist would prove too good a Christian
to light an auto da fé. It was but natural that he should forget this,
for he was a strong man in the centre of the conflict, and independ-
ence was the core of his being.
1


## p. 6063 (#33) ############################################

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6063
This strength of independence is shown by the fact that though
young, and profoundly sensitive to the attraction of a character like
Newman's, he was from the first able to resist the fascination which
that remarkable man exerted over all with whom he came in con-
tact. The pure spiritual nature possesses a mysterious power over
young men, so great that they often yield to its counterfeit. New-
man was the true priest, and Froude recognized his genius and that
his soul was "an adumbration of the Divine. " But he felt instinct-
ively the radical unsoundness of Newman's thought, and "would not
follow, though an angel led. " Others fell off for prudential reasons;
but Froude was indifferent to these, and obedient to a conviction the
strength of which must be estimated by the depth of his feeling for
character.
Froude was sometimes criticized for writing history under the in-
fluence of personal feeling. It is difficult to see how a readable his-
tory can be written except by one who at least takes an interest in
the story; but whether capacity for feeling makes a man a less trust-
worthy historian, depends upon how far this emotional susceptibility.
is controlled by intellectual insight and just views of the laws under
which society develops. That Froude was an absolutely perfect his-
torian, no one would claim: he was too intensely human to be per-
fect. It is safe to say that the perfect historian will not exist until
Shakespeare and Bacon reappear combined in one man. For the
great historian must be both scholar and artist. As scholar he must
possess, too, both the acquisitive and the organizing intellect.
He
must both gather facts and interpret them. He must have the artis-
tic sense which selects from the vast mass of fact that which is
significant. This power of artistic selection is of course influenced
by his unconscious ideals, by his conception of the relative import-
ance of the forces which move mankind, and of the ultimate goal of
progress. His philosophy directs his art, and his art interprets in
the light of his philosophy.
It may be admitted that Froude possesses a larger share of the
artistic than of the philosophic qualities necessary to the great his-
torian. At times his hatred of ecclesiasticism becomes almost a
prejudice. In his writings on Irish and colonial questions he evinces
the Englishman's love of the right, but sometimes, unfortunately, the
Englishman's inability to do justice to other races in points which
distinguish them from his own. In some expressions he seems to
distrust democracy in much the same unreasoning way in which
Mr. Ruskin distrusts machinery. He had imbibed something of Mr.
Carlyle's belief in the "strong man"; though he, no more than Car-
lyle, can show how the strong, just ruler can be produced or selected.
But a more serious deficiency in Froude's philosophy arises from his


## p. 6064 (#34) ############################################

6064
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
imperfect conception of the method of evolution which governs all
organizations, civil and religious, so that they continually throw off
short-lived varieties and history becomes a continual giving way of
the old order to the new. To fear, as Froude seems to, lest a sur-
vival may become a governing type, is as unreasonable as to fear
that old men will live forever. Certainly he would have taken a
juster, saner view of the English Reformation, had he been convinced
that all the collisions between the moral laws and the rebellious wills
of men, which are the burden of the years, are in the end obliter-
ated in the slow onward movement of the race; but then perhaps his
history would have lost in interest what it might have gained in
philosophic breadth and balance. For it cannot be denied that feel-
ing has given his narrative that most valuable quality — life.
The general recognition of Froude's power, and the growing con-
viction that he was far nearer right than the theological school he so
cordially detested, was vindicated by his appointment as Professor of
History at Oxford to succeed Freeman, one of the severest critics of
his historical fairness. He lived to deliver but three courses of lec-
tures, one of which has been published in that delightful volume
'The Life and Letters of Erasmus. ' The others, English Seamen of
the XVIth Century,' 'Lectures on the Council of Trent,' and the very
able paper on Job in 'Short Studies on Great Subjects,' even if taken
by themselves, would cause us to form a high opinion of the scope
and range of Froude's powers. Those to whom brilliancy is synony-
mous with unsoundness may perhaps continue to call him merely a
"brilliant writer"; but the general verdict will be that his brilliancy
is the structural adornment of a well-fitted framework of thought.
Charnon Johnson
THE GROWTH OF ENGLAND'S NAVY
From ‹English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century›
J'
JEA
EAN PAUL the German poet said that God had given to France
the empire of the land, to England the empire of the sea,
and to his own country the empire of the air. The world
has changed since Jean Paul's days. The wings of France have
been clipped: the German Empire has become a solid thing: but
England still holds her watery dominion; Britannia does still rule
the waves, and in this proud position she has spread the English


## p. 6065 (#35) ############################################

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6065
L
race over the globe; she is peopling new Englands at the Antip-
odes; she has made her Queen Empress of India; and is in fact
the very considerable phenomenon in the social and political world
which all acknowledge her to be. And all this she has achieved
in the course of three centuries, entirely in consequence of her
predominance as an
an ocean power. Take away her merchant
fleets, take away the navy that guards them,- her empire will
come to an end, her colonies will fall off like leaves from a
withered tree, and Britain will become once more an insignificant
island in the North Sea, for the future students in Australian
and New Zealand universities to discuss the fate of in their
debating societies.
How the English navy came to hold so extraordinary a posi-
tion is worth reflecting on. Much has been written on it, but
little, as it seems to me, which touches the heart of the matter.
We are shown the power of our country growing and expanding.
But how it grew; why, after a sleep of so many hundred years,
the genius of our Scandinavian forefathers suddenly sprang again
into life,- of this we are left without explanation.
The beginning was undoubtedly the defeat of the Spanish
Armada in 1588. Down to that time the sea sovereignty belonged
to the Spaniards, and had been fairly won by them. The con-
quest of Granada had stimulated and elevated the Spanish char-
acter. The subjects of Ferdinand and Isabella, of Charles V. , and
Philip II. , were extraordinary men and accomplished extraordi-
nary things. They stretched the limits of the known world; they
conquered Mexico and Peru; they planted their colonies over the
South-American continent; they took possession of the great West-
Indian islands, and with so firm a grasp that Cuba at least will
never lose the mark of the hand which seized it. They built
their cities as if for eternity. They spread to the Indian Ocean,
and gave their monarch's name to the Philippines. All this they
accomplished in half a century, and as it were, they did it with
a single hand; with the other they were fighting Moors and
Turks, and protecting the coasts of the Mediterranean from the
corsairs of Tunis and Constantinople.
They had risen on the crest of the wave, and with their proud
Non Sufficit Orbis were looking for new worlds to conquer, at a
time when the bark of the English water-dogs had scarcely been.
heard beyond their own fishing grounds, and the largest mer-
chant vessel sailing from the port of London was scarce bigger
XI-380


## p. 6066 (#36) ############################################

6066
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
than a modern coasting collier. And yet within the space of a
single ordinary life these insignificant islanders had struck the
sceptre from the Spaniards' grasp and placed the ocean crown on
the brow of their own sovereign. How did it come about?
What Cadmus had sown dragons' teeth in the furrows of the sea,
for the race to spring from who manned the ships of Queen
Elizabeth, who carried the flag of their own country round the
globe, and challenged and fought the Spaniards on their own
coasts and in their own harbors?
The English sea power was the legitimate child of the Refor-
mation. It grew, as I shall show you, directly out of the new
despised Protestantism. Matthew Parker and Bishop Jewell, the
judicious Hooker himself, excellent men as they were, would
have written and preached to small purpose without Sir Francis
Drake's cannon to play an accompaniment to their teaching.
And again, Drake's cannon would not have roared so loudly and
so widely, without seamen already trained in heart and hand to
work his ships and level his artillery. It was to the superior
seamanship, the superior quality of English ships and crews,
that the Spaniards attributed their defeat. Where did these ships
come from? Where and how did these mariners learn their
trade? Historians talk enthusiastically of the national spirit of a
people rising with a united heart to repel the invader, and so on.
But national spirit could not extemporize a fleet, or produce
trained officers and sailors to match the conquerors of Lepanto.
One slight observation I must make here at starting, and certainly
with no invidious purpose. It has been said confidently, it has
been repeated, I believe, by all modern writers,- that the Span-
ish invasion suspended in England the quarrels of creed, and
united Protestants and Roman Catholics in defense of their
Queen and country. They remind us especially that Lord How-
ard of Effingham, who was Elizabeth's admiral, was himself a
Roman Catholic. But was it so? The Earl of Arundel, the
head of the House of Howard, was a Roman Catholic, and he
was in the Tower praying for the success of Medina Sidonia.
Lord Howard of Effingham was no more a Roman Catholic than
-I hope I am not taking away their character-
than the pres-
ent Archbishop of Canterbury or the Bishop of London. He
was a Catholic, but an English Catholic, as those reverend prel-
ates are. Roman Catholic he could not possibly have been, nor
any one who on that great occasion was found on the side of
-


## p. 6067 (#37) ############################################

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6067
Elizabeth. A Roman Catholic is one who acknowledges the
Roman Bishop's authority. The Pope had excommunicated Eliz-
abeth, had pronounced her deposed, had absolved her subjects
from their allegiance and forbidden them to fight for her. No
Englishman who fought on that great occasion for English lib-
erty was, or could have been, in communion with Rome. Loose
statements of this kind, lightly made, fall in with the modern
humor. They are caught up, applauded, repeated, and pass
unquestioned into history. It is time to correct them a little.
THE DEATH OF COLONEL GORING
From Two Chiefs of Dunboy'
F
ATALLY mistaking what was intended for a friendly warning,
the colonel conceived that there was some one in the forge
whom the smith wanted to conceal.
"I may return or not," he said; "but I must first have a
word with these strangers of yours. We can meet as friends
for once, with nothing to dispute over. "
Minahan made no further attempt to prevent him from going
in. If gentlemen chose to have their quarrels, he muttered be-
tween his teeth, it was no business of his.
Goring pushed open the door and entered.
By the dim light
-for the shutter that had been thrown back had been closed
again, and the only light came from a window in the roof-he
made out three figures standing together at the further end of
the forge, in one of whom, though he tried to conceal himself,
he instantly recognized his visitor of the previous evening.
"You here, my man? " he said. "You left my house two
hours ago. Why are you not on your way home? "
Sylvester, seeing he was discovered, turned his face full round,
and in a voice quietly insolent, replied, "I fell in with some
friends of mine on the road. We had a little business together,
and it is good luck that has brought your honor to us while we
are talking, for the jintlemen here have a word or two they
would like to be saying to ye, colonel, before ye leave them. "
"To me! " said Goring, turning from Sylvester to the two
figures, whose faces were still covered by their cloaks. "If these
gentlemen are what I suppose them to be, I am glad to meet
them, and will hear willingly what they may have to say. "


## p. 6068 (#38) ############################################

6068
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
"Perhaps less willingly than you think, Colonel Goring," said
the taller of the two, who rose and stepped behind him to the
door, which he closed and barred. Goring, looking at him with
some surprise, saw that he was the person whom he had met on
the mountains, and had afterwards seen at the funeral at Der-
reen. The third man rose from a bench on which he had been
leaning, lifted his cap, and said:-
"There is an old proverb, sir, that short accounts make long
friends. There can be no friendship between you and me, but
the account between us is of very old standing. I have returned
to Ireland, only for a short stay; I am about to leave it, never
to come back. A gentleman and a soldier, like yourself, cannot
wish that I should go while that account is still unsettled. Our
fortunate meeting here this morning provides us with an oppor-
tunity. "
It was Morty's voice that he heard, and Morty's face that he
saw as he became accustomed to the gloom. He looked again at
the pretended messenger from the carded curate, and he then
remembered the old Sylvester who had brought the note from
Lord Fitzmaurice to the agent from Kenmare. In an instant
the meaning of the whole situation flashed across him.
It was
no casual re-encounter. He had been enticed into the place
where he found himself, with some sinister and perhaps deadly
purpose. A strange fatality had forced him again and again
into collision with the man of whose ancestral lands he had
come into possession. Once more, by a deliberate and treacher-
ous contrivance, he and the chief of the O'Sullivans had been
brought face to face together, and he was alone, without a friend
within call of him; unless his tenant, who as he could now see
had intended to give him warning, would interfere further in his
defense. And of this he knew Ireland well enough to be aware
that there was little hope.
He supposed that they intended to murder him. The door, at
which he involuntarily glanced, was fastened by this time with
iron bolts. He was a man of great personal strength and activ-
ity, but in such a situation neither would be likely to avail him.
Long inured to danger, and ready at all moments to meet what-
ever peril might threaten him, he calmly faced his adversary and
said:
"This meeting is not accidental, as you would have me be-
lieve. You have contrived it. Explain yourself further. "


## p. 6069 (#39) ############################################

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6069
"Colonel Goring," said Morty Sullivan, "you will recall the
circumstances under which we last parted. Enemy as you are
and always have been to me and mine, I will do you the justice
to say that on that occasion you behaved like a gentleman and a
man of courage. But our quarrel was not fought out. Persons
present interfered between us. We are now alone, and can com-
plete what was then left unfinished. "
"Whether I did well or ill, sir," the colonel answered, "in
giving you the satisfaction which you demanded of me at the
time you speak of, I will not now say. But I tell you that the
only relations which can exist between us at present are those
between a magistrate and a criminal who has forfeited his life.
If you mean to murder me, you can do it; you have me at ad-
vantage. You can thus add one more to the list of villainies with
which you have stained an honorable name. If you mean that I
owe you a reparation for personal injuries, such as the customs
of Ireland allow one gentleman to require from another, this, as
you well know, is not the way to ask for it. But I acknowledge
no such right. When I last encountered you I but partly knew
you. I now know you altogether. You have been a pirate on
the high seas. Your letters of marque do not cover you, for you
are a subject of the King, and have broken your allegiance.
Such as you are, you stand outside the pale of honorable men,
and I should degrade the uniform I wear if I were to stoop to
measure arms with you. "
The sallow olive of Morty's cheek turned livid. He clutched
the bench before him, till the muscles of his hands stood out like
knots of rope.
"You are in my power, colonel," he said: "do not tempt me
too far. If my sins have been many, my wrongs are more. It
must be this or worse. One word from me, and you are a dead
man. "
He laid four pistols on the smith's tool-chest.
"Take a pair
of them," he said. "They are loaded alike. Take which you
please. Let us stand on the opposite sides of this hovel, and so
make an end. If I fall, I swear on my soul you shall have no
hurt from any of my people. My friend Connell is an officer of
mine, but he holds a commission besides in the Irish Brigade.
There is no better-born gentleman in Kerry. His presence here
is your sufficient security. You shall return to Dunboy as safe
from harm as if you had the Viceroy's body-guard about you, or


## p. 6070 (#40) ############################################

6070
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
your own boat's crew that shot down my poor fellows at Glen-
gariff. To this I pledge you my honor. "
"Your honor! " said Goring; "your honor! And you tempted
me here by a lying tale, sent by the lips of yonder skulking
rascal. That alone, sir, were there nothing else, would have suf-
ficed to show what you are. "
A significant click caught the ear of both the speakers. Look-
ing round, they saw Sylvester had cocked a pistol.
"Drop that," said Morty, "or by God! kinsman of mine though
you be, I will drive a bullet through the brain of you. Enough
of this, sir," he said, turning to Goring. "Time passes, and this
scene must end. I would have arranged it otherwise, but you
yourself know that by this way alone I could have brought you
to the meeting. Take the pistols, I say, or by the bones of my
ancestors that lie buried under Dunboy Castle yonder, I will call
in my men from outside, and they shall strip you bare, and score
such marks on you as the quartermaster leaves on the slaves
that you hire to fight your battles. Prince Charles will laugh
when I tell him in Paris how I served one at least of the hounds
that chased him at Culloden. "
The forge in which this scene was going on was perfectly
familiar to Goring, for he had himself designed it and built it.
There was the ordinary broad open front to the road, constructed
of timber, which was completely shut. The rest of the building
was of stone, and in the wall at the back there was a small door
leading into a field, and thence into the country. Could this
door be opened, there was a chance, though but a faint one, of
escape. A bar lay across, but of no great thickness. The staple
into which it ran was slight. A vigorous blow might shatter
both.
Sylvester caught the direction of Goring's eye, caught its
meaning, and threw himself in the way. The colonel snatched
a heavy hammer which stood against the wall. With the sud-
denness of an electric flash he struck Sylvester on the shoulder,
broke his collar-bone, and hurled him back senseless, doubled
over the anvil. A second stroke, catching the bar in the middle,
shattered it in two, and the door hung upon the latch. Morty
and Connell, neither of whom had intended foul play, hesitated,
and in another moment Goring would have been free and away.
Connell, recovering himself, sprang forward and closed with him.
The colonel, who had been the most accomplished wrestler of


## p. 6071 (#41) ############################################

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6071
his regiment, whirled him round, flung him with a heavy fall on
the floor, and had his hand on the latch when, half stunned
as he was, Connell recovered his feet, drew a skene, and rushed at
Colonel Goring again. So sudden it all was, so swift the strug-
gle, and so dim the light, that from the other end it was hard to
see what was happening. Wrenching the skene out of Connell's
hands, and with the hot spirit of battle in him, Colonel Goring
was on the point of driving it into his assailant's side.
"Shoot, Morty! shoot, or I am a dead man! " Connell cried.
Morty, startled and uncertain what to do, had mechanically
snatched up a pistol when Sylvester was struck down. He raised
his hand at Connell's cry. It shook from excitement, and locked
together as the two figures were, he was as likely to hit friend.
as foe.
Again Connell called, and Morty fired and missed; and
the mark of the bullet is still shown in the wall of the smithy as
a sacred reminiscence of a fight for Irish liberty. The second
shot went true to its mark. Connell had been beaten down,
though unwounded, and Goring's tall form stood out above him
in clear view. This time Morty's hand did not fail him. A
shiver passed through Goring's limbs. His arms dropped. He
staggered back against the door, and the door yielded, and he
fell upon the ground outside.
But it was not to rise and fly.
The ball had struck him clean above the ear, and buried itself
in the brain. He was dead.
SCIENTIFIC METHOD APPLIED TO HISTORY
From Short Studies on Great Subjects>
ISTORICAL facts can only be verified by the skeptical and the
H inquiring, and skepticism and inquiry nip like a black frost
the eager credulity in which legendary biographies took
their rise. You can watch such stories as they grew in the con-
genial soil of belief. The great saints of the fifth, sixth, and
seventh centuries, who converted Europe to Christianity, were as
modest and unpretending as true, genuine men always are. They
claimed no miraculous powers for themselves.
Miracles might
have been worked in the days of their fathers. They for their
own parts relied on nothing but the natural powers of persuasion
and example. Their companions, who knew them personally in
life, were only a little more extravagant. Miracles and portents


## p. 6072 (#42) ############################################

6072
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
vary
in an inverse ratio with the distance of time. St. Patrick
is absolutely silent about his own conjuring performances. He
told his followers, perhaps, that he had been moved by his good
angel to devote himself to the conversion of Ireland. The angel
of metaphor becomes in the next generation an actual seraph.
On a rock in the county of Down there is, or was, a singular
mark, representing rudely the outline of a foot. From that rock,
where the young Patrick was feeding his master's sheep, a writer
of the sixth century tells us that the angel Victor sprang back to
heaven after delivering his message, and left behind him the
imprinted witness of his august visit. Another hundred years
pass, and legends from Hegesippus are imported into the life of
the Irish apostle. St. Patrick and the Druid enchanter contend
before King Leogaire on Tara Hill, as Simon Magus and St.
Peter contended before the Emperor Nero. Again a century, and
we are in a world of wonders where every human lineament is
löst. St. Patrick, when a boy of twelve, lights a fire with icicles;
when he comes to Ireland he floats thither upon an altar-stone
which Pope Celestine had blessed for him. He conjures a Welsh
marauder into a wolf, makes a goat cry out in the stomach of a
thief who had stolen him, and restores dead men to life, not
once or twice but twenty times. The wonders with which the
atmosphere is charged gravitate towards the largest concrete
figure which is moving in the middle of them, till at last, as
Gibbon says, the sixty-six lives of St. Patrick which were extant
in the twelfth century must have contained at least as many thou-
sand lies. And yet of conscious lying there was very little; per-
haps nothing at all. The biographers wrote in good faith and
were industrious collectors of material, only their notions of
probability were radically different from ours. The more mar-
velous a story, the less credit we give to it; warned by experi-
ence of carelessness, credulity, and fraud, we disbelieve everything
for which we cannot find contemporary evidence, and from the
value of that evidence we subtract whatever may be due to prev-
alent opinion or superstition. To the medieval writer, the
more stupendous the miracle the more likely it was to be true;
he believed everything which he could not prove to be false, and
proof was not external testimony, but inherent fitness.
So much for the second period of what is called human his.
tory. In the first or mythological there is no historical ground-
work at all. In the next or heroic we have accounts of real


## p. 6073 (#43) ############################################

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6073
persons, but handed down to us by writers to whom the past
was a world of marvels, whose delight was to dwell upon the
mighty works which had been done in the old times, whose ob-
ject was to elevate into superhuman proportions the figures of the
illustrious men who had distinguished themselves as apostles or
warriors. They thus appear to us like their portraits in stained-
glass windows, represented rather in a transcendental condition.
of beatitude than in the modest and checkered colors of real
life. We see them not as they were, but as they appeared to an
adoring imagination, and in a costume of which we can only
affirm with certainty that it was never worn by any child of
Adam on this plain, prosaic earth. For facts as facts there is
as yet no appreciation; they are shifted to and fro, dropped out
of sight, or magnified, or transferred from owner to owner,-
manipulated to suit or decorate a preconceived and brilliant idea.
We are still in the domain of poetry, where the canons of the
art require fidelity to general principles, and allow free play to
fancy in details. The Virgins of Raphael are no less beautiful
as paintings, no less masterpieces of workmanship, though in no
single feature either of face or form or costume they resemble
the historical mother of Christ, or even resemble one another.
At the next stage we pass with the chroniclers into history
proper. The chronicler is not a poet like his predecessor. He
does not shape out consistent pictures with a beginning, a mid-
dle, and an end. He is a narrator of events, and he connects
them together on a chronological string. He professes to be re-
lating facts. He is not idealizing, he is not singing the praises
of the heroes of the sword or the crosier; he means to be true
in the literal and commonplace sense of that ambiguous word.
And yet in his earlier phases, take him in what part of the world
we please, take him in ancient Egypt or Assyria, in Greece or
in Rome, or in modern Europe,- he is but a step in advance of
his predecessor. He is excellent company. He never moralizes,
never bores you with philosophy of history or political economy.
He never speculates about causes. But on the other hand, he is
uncritical. He takes unsuspectingly the materials which he finds
ready to his hand,—the national ballads, the romances, and the bi-
ographies. He transfers to his pages whatever catches his fancy.
The more picturesque an anecdote, the more unhesitatingly he
writes it down, though in the same proportion it is the less likely
to be authentic. Romulus and Remus suckled by the wolf;
―――――――――――
1


## p. 6074 (#44) ############################################

6074
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
Curtius jumping into the gulf; our English Alfred spoiling the
cakes; or Bruce watching the leap of the spider,- stories of this
kind he relates with the same simplicity with which he records
the birth in his own day, in some outlandish village, of a child
with two heads, or the appearance of the sea-serpent or the fly-
ing dragon. Thus the chronicle, however charming, is often noth-
ing but poetry taken literally and translated into prose. It grows,
however, and improves insensibly with the growth of the nation.
Like the drama, it develops from poor beginnings into the lofti-
est art, and becomes at last perhaps the very best kind of histor-
ical writing which has yet been produced. Herodotus and Livy,
Froissart and Hall and Holinshed, are as great in their own
departments as Sophocles or Terence or Shakespeare. We are
not yet entirely clear of portents and prodigies. Superstition
clings to us as our shadow, and is to be found in the wisest as
well as the weakest. The Romans, the most practical people that
ever lived,—a people so pre-eminently effective that they have
printed their character indelibly into the constitution of Europe,
these Romans, at the very time they were making themselves
the world's masters, allowed themselves to be influenced in the
most important affairs of State by a want of appetite in the
sacred chickens, or the color of the entrails of a calf. Take him
at his best, man is a great fool. It is likely enough that we our-
selves habitually say and practice things which a thousand years
hence will seem not a jot less absurd. Cato tells us that the
Roman augurs could not look one another in the face without
laughing; and I have heard that bishops in some parts of the
world betray sometimes analogous misgivings.
In able and candid minds, however, stuff of this kind is tol-
erably harmless, and was never more innocent than in the case
of the first great historian of Greece. Herodotus was a man of
vast natural powers. Inspired by a splendid subject, and born at
the most favorable time, he grew to manhood surrounded by the
heroes of Marathon and Salamis and Platea. The wonders of
Egypt and Assyria were for the first time thrown open to the
inspection of strangers. The gloss of novelty was not yet worn
off, and the impressions falling fresh on an eager, cultivated, but
essentially simple and healthy mind, there were qualities and con-
ditions combined which produced one of the most delightful
books which was ever written. He was an intense patriot; and
he was unvexed with theories, political or moral. His philosophy


## p. 6075 (#45) ############################################

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6075
was like Shakespeare's, -a calm, intelligent insight into human.
things. He had no views of his own, which the fortunes of
Greece or other countries were to be manipulated to illustrate.
The world as he saw it was a well-made, altogether promising
and interesting world; and his object was to relate what he had
seen and what he had heard and learnt, faithfully and accurately.
His temperament was rather believing than skeptical; but he was
not idly credulous. He can be critical when occasion requires.
He distinguishes always between what he had seen with his own
eyes and what others told him. He uses his judgment freely,
and sets his readers on their guard against uncertain evidence.
And there is not a book existing which contains in the same
space so much important truth,-truth which survives the sharp-
est test that modern discoveries can apply to it.
The same may be said in a slightly less degree of Livy and
of the best of the late European chroniclers: you have the same
freshness, the same vivid perception of external life, the same
absence of what philosophers call subjectivity, - the projection
into the narrative of the writer's own personality, his opinions,
thoughts, and theories. Still, in all of them, however vivid,
however vigorous the representation, there is a vein of fiction
largely and perhaps consciously intermingled. In a modern work
of history, when a statesman is introduced as making a speech,
the writer at any rate supposes that such a speech was actually
made. He has found an account of it somewhere either in detail
or at least in outline or epitome. The boldest fabricator would
not venture to introduce an entire and complete invention.