There are parts of Mr.Froude's volumes which we have read with real pleasure, with real admiration.

But the book, as a whole, is vicious in its conception, vicious in its execution.

No merit of detail can atone for the hollowness that runs through the whole.

Mr.Froude has written twelve volumes, and he has made himself a name in writing them, but he has not written, in the pregnant phrase so aptly quoted by the Duke of Aumale, 'un livre de bonne foy.'"* -- * The Duke was not, as Freeman implies that he was, referring to Froude.
-- By a curious irony of fate or circumstance Freeman has unconsciously depicted the frame of mind in which Froude approached historic problems.

"That burning zeal for truth, for truth in all matters great and small, that zeal which shrinks from no expenditure of time and toil in the pursuit of truth--the spirit without which history, to be worthy of the name, cannot be written," was the dominant principle of Froude's life and work.