Even his friendship for Frederic Maurice could not rouse him to any great interest in the latter's expulsion from King's College.

"As thinkers," he wrote to Clough on the 22nd of November, 1853, "Maurice, and still more the Mauricians, appear to me the most hopelessly imbecile that any section of the world have been driven to believe in.

I am glad you liked Job, though my writing it was a mere accident, and I am not likely to do more of the kind.

I am going to stick to the History in spite of your discouragement, and I believe I shall make something of it.

At any rate one has substantial stuff between one's fingers to be moulding at, and not those slime and sea sand ladders to the moon 'opinion.'" Froude pursued his studies, reading all the collections of original documents in Strype and other chroniclers.