His own reverence for truth he illustrated quaintly enough at the close of his last article.

"I leave others to protest," said this veracious critic, "against Mr.Froude's treatment of the sixteenth century.

I do not profess to have mastered those times in detail from original sources." I leave others to protest! From 1864 to 1870 Freeman had continuously attacked successive volumes of Froude's History in The Saturday Review.

Yet he here makes in his own name a statement quite irreconcilable with his ever having done anything of the kind, and accompanies it with an admission which, if it had been made in The Saturday Review, would have robbed his invective of more than half its sting.
And now let us see what was the real foundation for this imposing fabric.

Freeman's boisterous truculence made such a deafening noise, and raised such a blinding dust, that it takes some little time and trouble to discover the hollowness of the charges.