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Mr. Firth, immediately before this quotation, says that Ludlow was 'dangerous to the English Government,' and proceeds to justify this statement by the words which we have given. But, though he was undoubtedly regarded as an important leader of the more ardent republicans, Ludlow was not the man to become a successful conspirator. No one was ever less capable of overthrowing a government by plots and secret schemes. His nature was open; his hostility was marked, but it was that of a soldier. If he had tried to be a conspirator, he would not have succeeded, for he possessed neither cunning nor finesse, neither the instincts of a successful leader nor the pliant readiness of the useful assistant. Thus, when he was urged by his friends in 1666 to repair to Paris to aid in formulating measures with the Dutch and French, with a view to the re-establishment of the Commonwealth, he showed a positive disinclination to have anything to do with the matter. Again, at a much later period Nathaniel Wade, one of the Rye House conspirators, writes, in his confession in reference to a visit which he paid to Ludlow in 1683 with a view to obtain his co-operation in attempts against the English Government: I did speak with Colonel Ludlow as I was desired, but found him no wayes disposed to the thing, saying he had done his work he thought in the world, and was resolved to 'leave it to others.'

However strong his sympathies may have been for a republic, such a man could not be dangerous to an established government as long as he was merely an exile in a distant land. Of this exile Ludlow writes freely, and his account of his own life abroad and that of his friends is the best description which exists of a phase of life which forms a part of the series of events which are gathered within the period of the Rebellion and the Restoration.

One noticeable thing in this portion of Ludlow's Memoirs is that no word of regret for his absence from home, no repining at the ill-fortune which had condemned him to a useless exile in the best years of his life, can be found in his narrative. He appears to have accepted his lot with a serenity born of a commonplace and narrow practicalness, and not of the resolute determination to endure evils, which cannot be overcome, of a man of wide sympathies and thoughtful mind. He does not write down a word of sorrow, just as he does not pen a single reflection on his own position or on English or foreign affairs, and his narrative shows how a transparent honesty of purpose, united to some

stiff resolution, but without the help of any more mental capacity than that possessed by any sensible farmer or tradesman, can in times of national crisis raise a man to a position of considerable importance.

In the same way, when the estates of those who had escaped from England were forfeited, he chronicles the fact in a quite impersonal manner, though it deprived him of all his landed property; the only note of bitterness is contained in the final commentary: But the Duke of York, upon whom these confiscated estates were bestowed, must 'be supplied by any means.'*

When the revolution of 1688 occurred, it appeared as if the time had come for Ludlow to return to England and to end his days at home. Ten years only were wanting to complete the half-century since Whitehall had seen the execution of Charles I.; most of the actors in the scenes which immediately preceded and followed that tragic event had passed away; younger generations had grown up, new questions had arisen in public affairs, the constitution of England was changed; but public feeling still regarded 'the regicides with horror, and only a small section even of the Whigs were willing to tolerate the presence of one of their leaders on English soil.' Ludlow arrived in England in August 1689; in November a motion was carried in the House of Commons for an address to the king to issue a proclamation for his apprehension. Thereupon he again left England, and returned to Vevay, and here he died in November 1692-'Il était entré républicain dans le parle'ment, il mourut républicain sur les bords du lac de Genève.'

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Mr. Firth gives in a note some of the disposition of Ludlow's property, from which it appears that the Duke of York did not obtain any of his estates.

ART. VII.-Life and Letters of Erasmus.

Lectures delivered

at Oxford, 1893-4. By J. A. FROUDE, Regius Professor of Modern History. London: 1894.

A FEW weeks only after the sheets of this volume had passed through the press, the fading eyesight of their venerable author was finally closed in death. It was pre-eminently an instance of finis cormat opus, the apt choice of a congenial subject for a series of lectures-first and last-in an academic course remarkable for its non-academic lustre and greatness. The careful painting and fixing in a long gallery of portraits, the last and most masterly of many similar artistic creations, were in themselves enough to fascinate English historical students. Whatever they might allege as to the historian's career, they could hardly refuse to concede the beatitude which the Roman historian characterised as an accompaniment of some kinds of death. Besides this opportunity, as the Romans designated the exact coincidence of more or less correlated events, the Professor's 'legacy,' so to speak, has other attributes. It marks, like the high-water line on the sand that tells of the furthest reach of the flowing tide, the close of a long and illustrious life. It sets the official stamp of our highest seat of learning on a scholar's course, commenced not only independently, but in healthy antagonism to its own effete traditions of forty years before. It brings to a final culmination intellectual tendencies and religious aspirations which animated their author's whole life. It reproduces in a special vicarious embodiment, like an historical painting which symbolises the present in the guise of the past, a character of thought and energy which the author regarded as the loftiest altitude of human attainment. Lastly, it is the legacy of a writer gifted with a wealth of talent and historical erudition, set forth, too, in a form and dress of singular beauty-a treasure not in itself without imperfections, but undoubtedly contained in no earthen vessel,' but in a repository, so to speak, of rare and precious material, uniquely adapted for its special purpose.

Few English authors of the first rank are better known in the main incidents of their lives than James Anthony Froude. Two causes may be held to account for this. The main incidents of his life are of an unusually striking kind, and, secondly, he possessed to a most marvellous extent the faculty of permeating his writings with his own personality.

No matter what the form of his work might be, or how varied its subjects, almost every page of his writing-just as every yard of a manufacturer's textile fabric-is stamped with the Froude trade-mark, without which'-as if he would have warned his readers-none is genuine.' There is either the brief allusion to the personal incidents of his life, there is the emphatic reproduction of some wellworn conviction; or taking it in its most unobtrusive form, there is the clear, delicate incisive style which attests the author no less tacitly and gracefully than forcibly and undeniably. Hence his writings-histories, essays, novelsmay be said to contain, in an inseparable blend of personal author and impersonal subject-matter, his own autobiography. Whether Professor Froude's life is likely to be written we have no means of knowing; but of one thing we feel certain in few cases among our foremost literary men is a formal biography more needless, Unconsciously he has depicted his own life-the interaction of thought and feeling-even more fully than the external framework of event and historical fact and progress, but limning both one and the other with a combined insight and accuracy which leave little to be desired.

James Anthony was the youngest son of the Venerable R. H. Froude, Archdeacon of Totnes and Rector of Dartington, in Devonshire, in which parish James was born, April 23, 1818, his two elder brothers, each of whom attained a certain degree of eminence, being Richard Hurrell, and William Froude. The early home of the brothers derives its name from the most picturesque of the South Devon rivers, and it is interesting to remember that James Anthony derived that sensitively artistic perception of scenery which afterwards distinguished him from the wooded ravines and lovely meanderings through wild glades of gorse and heather which mark the devious course of the Dart from the moor to the sea. Not only his novels and 'colonial works,' but even the more sober pages of his histories and essays, attest the power and energy combined with a masterly sense of beauty which he employs in depicting fair scenes of Nature. It might not be carrying the association of ideas too far if we connected the carefully elaborated, limpid, and musical style of the author with the clear, translucent, rhythmic flow of the river. In the intellectual crucible of the genuine thinker all whose ideas are permeated with a profound and uniform sense of beauty, the reduction of notions, facts, and comparisons, perhaps a

little divergent at starting, to a uniform and harmonious assimilation of beauty is an operation not only possible and natural; it is a proof and a test of vigorous, homogeneous intellectual life.

Of his home life Professor Froude gives us a charming description in that graphic piece of autobiography contained in the fourth volume of his Short Essays,' and entitled The Counter-Reformation in Oxford.' Thus describing the average type of country parson at the beginning of the century, he says:

'Our own household was a fair representative of the order. My father was rector of the parish. He was archdeacon, he was justice of the peace. He had a moderate fortune of his own consisting chiefly in land, and he belonged therefore to the "landed interest." Much of the magistrate's work of the neighbourhood passed through his hand. If anything was amiss, it was his advice which was most sought after, and I remember his being called upon to lay a troublesome ghost.'

After a home training common in those days to the sons. of country gentlemen, young Froude was sent to Westminster School, whence in 1837 he left for Oxford, entering the college (Oriel) which was destined soon to become the centre of the new school of thought. With the leaders of this school young Froude came, through the intervention of his brother Hurrell, into contact with Keble, Pusey, and the other leaders of the Tractarian movement, then stirring into active life, especially with the foremost of them all, John Henry Newman. The influence of the last-named thinker, considering the source and direction of the incidence, may be regarded as the most remarkable episode in the intellectual and religious life of Froude. Students of scientific psychology, and its bearing on the religious changes and convulsions in great and sensitive souls, might be expected to evince some wonder at an access of feeling and sympathy which the remaining mental course of Froude certainly gave them no reason to expect. One main feature of his earliest thought was the combination of intellectual restlessness, a profound sense of religion as in some way a truth and a fact, together with a feeling of mental independence and selfreliance. He was on the road which might have led, with almost equal directness, to a slavish supernaturalism or to a peevish denial of the most elementary truths of religion. It was on the side of supernaturalism that he was taken captive by the religious fervency and intellectual potency, however wayward and one-sided, of Newman. In distinction from the authors he had read, from

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