authorities with too much freedom. Carlyle, who knew what historical
labour was, saw at once that Froude dealt with his material as a
born student and an ardent lover of truth. His suggestions were
always excellent, as sound and just as they were careful and kind.
One criticism, which Froude disregarded, shows not only Carlyle's
wide knowledge (that appears throughout), but also that his long
residence south of the Tweed never made him really English. It
refers to Froude's description of the English volunteers at Calais
who "were for years the terror of Normandy," and of Englishmen
generally as "the finest people in all Europe," nurtured in profuse
abundance on "great shins of beef."

"This," says Carlyle, "seems to me exaggerated; what we call John-
Bullish. The English are not, in fact, stronger, braver, truer, or
better than the other Teutonic races: they never fought better than
the Dutch, Prussians, Swedes, etc., have done. For the rest, modify
a little: Frederick the Great was brought up on beer-sops (bread
boiled in beer), Robert Burns on oatmeal porridge; and Mahomet and
the Caliphs conquered the world on barley meal."

David Hume would have thoroughly approved of this note. Froude's
patriotism was incorrigible, and he left the passage as it stood. A
little farther on Carlyle's hatred of political economy, in which
Froude fully shared, breaks out with amusing vigour. "If," wrote the
younger historian, "the tendency of trade to assume a form of mere
self-interest be irresistible," etc. "And is it?" comments the
elder. "Let us all get prussic acid, then." A recent speculator
preferred cyanide of potassium. But if "mere self-interest"
comprises fraudulent balance-sheets, it cannot claim any support
from political economy. When Carlyle drew up a petition to the House