President Grant had just been assured of his second term, and even politicians had leisure to think of their famous guest.

He was at once invited to a great banquet in New York, and found himself lodged with sumptuous hospitality in a luxurious hotel at the expense of the Bureau which had organised the lectures.

One newspaper quaintly described him as "looking like a Scotch farmer, with an open frank face and calm mild eyes." His History was well known, for the Scribners had sold a hundred and fifty thousand copies.

His opinions were of course freely invited, and he did not hesitate to give them.

"I talk much Toryism to them all, and ridicule the idea of England's decay, or of our being in any danger of revolution; and with Colonies and India and Commerce, etc., I insist that we are just as big as they are, and have just as large a future before us." Both Froude and his hosts might have remembered with advantage Disraeli's fine saying that great nations are those which produce great men.