His whole life had been a preparation for the task.

When he had the free run of his father's library after leaving Westminster, it was to the historical shelves that he went first; and while his brother talked eloquently about the evils of the Reformation, he himself was studying its causes.

His own entanglement in the Anglican revival was personal, accidental, and brief.

It was due entirely to his affectionate admiration for Newman, aided perhaps, if by anything, by curiosity to know something about the lives of the saints.

For a real saint, such as Hugh of Lincoln, he had a sincere reverence, and loved to show it.
The miraculous element disgusted him, and the more he read of ecclesiastical performances the more anti-ecclesiastical he became.
The article in The Edinburgh Review for July, 1858, upon Froude's first four volumes is an elaborate, an able, and a bitter attack.
Henry Reeve, the editor of The Edinburgh at that time, and for many years afterwards, was not himself a scholar, like his illustrious predecessor, Cornewall Lewis.