There was certainly no one living when Froude died who could have written the famous passage in the first chapter of his History about the decay of mediaevalism: "For, indeed, a change was coming upon the world, the meaning and direction of which even still are hidden from us, a change from era to era.

The paths trodden by the footsteps of ages were broken up; old things were passing away, and the faith and the life of ten centuries were dissolving like a dream.

Chivalry was dying; the abbey and the castle were soon together to crumble into ruins; and all the forms, desires, beliefs, convictions of the old world were passing away, never to return.

A new continent had risen up beyond the western sea.

The floor of heaven, inlaid with stars, had sunk back into an infinite abyss of immeasurable space; and the fair earth itself, unfixed from its foundations, was seen to be but a small atom in the awful vastness of the universe.