mild constraint of a public school, seems boundless, was to him the
perfection of bliss. He began to develop those powers of
conversation which in after years gave him an irresistible influence
over men and women, young and old. Convinced that, like his brothers
and sisters, he had but a short time to live, and having
certainly been full of misery, he resolved to make the best of his
time, and enjoy himself while he could. He was under no obligation
to any one, unless it were to the Archdeacon for his pocket-money.
His father and his brother, doubtless with the best intentions, had
made life more painful for him after his mother's death than they
could have made it if she had been alive. But Hurrell was gone, his
father was in Devonshire, and he could do as he pleased. He lived
with the idle set in college; riding, boating, and playing tennis,
frequenting wines and suppers. From vicious excess his intellect and
temperament preserved him. Deep down in his nature there was a
strong Puritan element, to which his senses were subdued.
Nevertheless, for two years he lived at Oxford in contented
idleness, saying with Isaiah, and more literally than the prophet,

"Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall die."

It was a wholly unreformed Oxford to which Froude came. If it
"breathed the last enchantments of the Middle Age," it was mediaeval
in its system too, and the most active spirits of the place, the
leaders of the Oxford Movement, were frank reactionaries, who hated
the very name of reform. Even a reduction in the monstrous number of
Irish Bishoprics pertaining to the establishment was indignantly
denounced as sacrilege, and was the immediate cause of Keble's
sermon on National Apostasy to which the famous "movement" has been
traced. John Henry Newman was at that time residing in Oriel, not as