What he could not understand, what it took him a long time to live down, was that friends who really knew him should believe him capable of baseness and treachery.

Now that it is all over, that Froude's biography has taken its place in classical literature, and that Mrs.Carlyle's letters are acknowledged to be among the best in the language, the whole story appears like a nightmare.

But it was real enough twenty years ago, when people who never read books of any kind thought that Froude was the name of the man that whitewashed Henry VIII.

and blackened Carlyle.

Froude would probably have been happier if he had turned upon his assailants once for all, as he once finally and decisively turned upon Freeman.