Those facts had a lesson, for them as well as for him, and his sense of what the lesson was had deepened with years.

He had observed in his own day an event which made much the same impression upon him as study of the French Revolution had made upon Carlyle.

When the Second Empire perished at Sedan, Froude saw in the catastrophe the judgment of Providence upon a sinister and tortuous career.

If the duty of an historian be to exclude moral considerations, Froude did not fulfil it.

That there were good men on the wrong side he perceived plainly enough.