If Froude did not altogether understand the Irish people, at least the Irish Catholics, and had no sympathy with their political aspirations, he loved their humour, and the scenery of "the most beautiful island in the world" had been familiar to him from his early manhood.

In one of his youthful rambles he had been struck down by small-pox, and nursed with a devotion which he never forgot.

Yet between him and the Celt, as between him and the Catholic, there was a mysterious, impassable barrier.

They had not the same fundamental ideas of right and wrong.

They did not in very truth worship the same God.