CHAPTER IX.
BOOKS AND TRAVEL The two passions of Froude's life were Devonshire and the sea.
"Summer has come at last," he wrote to Mrs.Kingsley from Salcombe in the middle of September, "after two months of rain and storm.

The fields from which the wrecks of the harvest were scraped up mined and sprouting now lie basking in stillest sunshine, as if wind and rain had never been heard of.

The coast is extremely beautiful, and I, in addition to the charms of the place, hear my native tongue spoken and sung in the churches in undiminished purity." Carlyle often kept him in London when he would much rather have been elsewhere.

But, wherever he was, he had a ready pen, and his thoughts naturally clothed themselves in a literary garb.

His enjoyment of books, especially old books, was intense.