youngest son was a fool, and might as well be apprenticed to a
tanner. Having hoped that he would be off his hands as a student of
Christ Church at sixteen, he was bitterly disappointed, and took no
pains to conceal his disappointment.

To Anthony himself it seemed a matter of indifference what became of
him, and a hopeless mystery why he had been brought into the world.
He had no friend. The consumption in the family was the boy's only
hope. His mother had died of it, and his brother Robert, who had
been kind to him, and taught him to ride. It was already showing
itself in Hurrell. His own time could not, he thought, be long.
Meanwhile, he was subjected to petty humiliations, in which the
inventive genius of Hurrell may be traced. He was not, for instance,
permitted to have clothes from a tailor. Old garments were found in
the house, and made up for him in uncouth shapes by a woman in the
village. His father seldom spoke to him, and never said a kind word
to him. By way of keeping him quiet, he was set to copy out Barrow's
sermons. It is difficult to understand how the sternest
disciplinarian, being human, could have treated his own motherless
boy with such severity. The Archdeacon acted, no doubt, upon a
theory, the theory that sternness to children is the truest kindness
in the long run.

Well might Macaulay say that he would rather a boy should learn to
lisp all the bad words in the language than grow up without a
mother. Froude's interrupted studies were nothing compared to a
childhood without love, and there was nobody to make him feel the
meaning of the word. Fortunately, though his father was always at
home, his brother was much away, and he was a good deal left to
himself after Robert's death. Hurrell did not disdain to employ him