For myself I can say that I have discriminated with such
faculty as I possess. I have kept back nothing. I have con-
sciously distorted nothing which conflicts with my own views.
I have accepted what seems sufficiently proved. I have
rejected what I can find no support for save in hearsay or
prejudice."
Froude wrote history as he conceived it with a power rarely equalled. His pages pulse with life. But though he drew from sources of the highest value, many of them never before utilized, he lacked a sound critical method of dealing with them. In this respect his later volumes show a marked improvement over the earlier ones. Unbiassed perception seems at times to have been simply beyond his powers ; the facts of his own narrative he often saw as no one else saw them. Objective description he professed to aim at, but rarely attained, for he approached his material too much in the spirit of an artist. In his pictures the shadows are too deep and the lights are too richly glowing.
A sentimentalist by nature, he was deficient in sobriety and poise of judgment, and he lacked the patience for accu- racy in details. He had little interest in modern social or political science, and to the reader of the present day one of the most serious deficiencies of his work is its failure to give adequate attention to the constitutional and economic aspects of the period. Yet, after all deductions, the History remains an imposing contribution to our knowledge of what its author believed "the greatest achievement in English history, the ' breaking the bands of Rome ' and the establishment of spir- itual independence; " and even when for the student it shall have been displaced by the work of some one more largely endowed with the indispensable qualifications of an historian, it will still have an enduring position in the literature of the English people.
INDEX
INDEX
Adams, H. B., 246 n., 252 n.
Adams, J., 161.
Advance, The, on Whitman, 46 n., 54 n.
Alexander VI., Bulls of, 196-200.
American Board, the officials distrust Spalding's narrative, 23 ; claims of, 27.
Applegate, J., on emigration of 1843, 92 ; on Whitman, ib.
Ashburton, Lord, 14, 68 n., 82 n.
Ashburton Treaty, 14, 82 n., 94.
Atkinson, Rev. G. H., first missionary of the Home Missionary Soc. in Ore- gon, 17 ; silent, before 1865, as to poli- tical services of Whitman 17, 18, 20; brings Spalding's story east, 16, 31 ; 35.
Azurara, 175 ; on Prince Henry's aims, 176-177.
B
Badajos, Congress of, 229,
Bancroft, George, 114, 229, 230 n., 278, 280, 287.
Bancroft, H. H., his Oregon quoted, 28 n., 29 n., 64 n. ; characterized, 41 n.
Barros, his Da Asia, trans, into German, 181, 181 n.; error of , 194 n.
Barrows, his Oregon, 7 n. ; character- ized, 40-42; his shuffling on nego- tiations of Sir Geo. Simpson, 82 n.
Beck, C. D.,
