But can we predict historical events, as we can predict an eclipse?
That is Froude's answer to Buckle, in the form of a question.
"Gibbon believed that the era of conquerors was at an end.

Had he lived out the full life of man, he would have seen Europe at the feet of Napoleon.

But a few years ago we believed the world had grown too civilised for war, and the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park was to be the inauguration of a new era.

Battles, bloody as Napoleon's, are now the familiar tale of every day; and the arts which have made the greatest progress are the arts of destruction." It is difficult to see the atheism in all this, but the common sense is plain enough.

Froude belonged to the school of literary historians, such as were Thucydides and Tacitus, Gibbon and Finlay, not to the school of Buckle, or, as we should now say, of Professor Bury.
In 1865 Froude removed from Clifton Place, Hyde Park, to Onslow Gardens in South Kensington, where he lived for the next quarter of a century.