The creed in which he had been brought up was giving way under him, and he could find no principle of action at all.

Brooding ceaselessly over these problems, he at the same time lowered his physical strength by abstinence, living upon bread, milk, and vegetables, giving up meat and wine.

In this unpromising frame of mind, and in the course of solitary rambles, he composed The Nemesis of Faith.* The book is, both in substance and in style, quite unworthy of Froude.

But in the life of a man who afterwards wrote what the world would not willingly let die it is an epoch of critical importance.
To describe it in a word is impossible.

To describe it in a few words is not easy.