His champion, whose opinion was more to him than any other, than any number of others, wrote to Mrs.Froude on the 5th of December, 1872: "The rest of the affair, all that loud whirlwind of Bully Burke, Saturday Review and Co., both at home and abroad, I take to be, in essence, absolutely nothing; and to deserve from him no more regard than the barking of dogs, or the braying of asses.

He may depend on it, what he is saying about Ireland is the genuine truth, or the nearest to it that has ever been said by any person whatever; and I hope he knows long ere this (if he likes to consider it) that the truth alone is anything, and all the circumambient balderdash and whirlwinds of nonsense tumbling round it are, and eternally remain, nothing.

Tell him I have read his book, and know others that have read it with attention; and that their and my clear opinion is as above.

To myself there is a ring in it as of clear steel; and my prophecy is that all the roaring blockheads of the world cannot prevent its natural effect on human souls.

Sooner or later all persons will have to believe it." Carlyle seldom qualified his approval, and his earnest advocacy was to Froude a recompense beyond all price.
The first volume of Froude's English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, to which Carlyle refers, had been published at home while the author was lecturing on the Irish question to the people of the United States.