united the highest mental training with the service of God and the
imitation of Christ. There was in the Cleaver household none of that
reserve which the Tractarians inculcated in matters of religion. The
Christian standard was habitually held up as the guide of life and
conduct, an example to be always followed whatever the immediate
consequences that might ensue. Mr. Cleaver was a man of moderate
fortune, who could be hospitable without pinching, and he was
acquainted with the best Protestant society in Ireland. Public
affairs were discussed in his house with full knowledge, and without
the frivolity affected by public men. O'Connell was at that time
supreme in the government of Ireland, though his reign was drawing
to a close. The Whigs held office by virtue of a compact with the
Irish leader, and their Under-Secretary at Dublin Castle, Thomas
Drummond, had gained the affections of the people by his sympathetic
statesmanship. An epigrammatic speaker said in the House of Commons
that Peel governed England, O'Connell governed Ireland, and the
Whigs governed Downing Street. It was all coming to an end. Drummond
died, the Whigs went out of office, Peel governed Ireland, and
England too. Froude just saw the last phase of O'Connellism, and he
did not like it. In politics he never looked very far below the
surface of things, and the wrongs of Ireland did not appeal to him.
That Protestantism was the religion of the English pale, and of the
Scottish Presbyterians in Ulster, not of the Irish people, was a
fact outside his thoughts. He saw two things clearly enough. One was
the strength and beauty of the religious faith by which the Cleavers
and their friends lived. The other was the misery, squalor, and
chronic discontent of the Catholic population, then almost twice as
large as after the famine it became. He did not pause to reflect
upon what had been done by laws made in England, or upon the
iniquity of taxing Ireland in tithes for the Church of a small