Froude often reminds us of Pascal.  Both had that peculiarly bright, brilliant, sharp-cutting intellect which passes with ease through the coverings and disguises which veil realities from men.  Both had mathematical powers of unusual originality and clearness; both had the same imaginative faculty; both had the same keen interest in practical problems of science; both felt and followed the attraction of deeper and more awful interests.  Both had the same love of beauty; both suppressed it.  Both had the same want of wide or deep learning; they made skilful use of what books came to their hand, and used their reading as few readers are able to use it; but their real instrument of work was their own quick and strong insight, and power of close and vigorous reasoning.  Both had the greatest contempt for fashionable and hollow “shadows of religion.”  Both had the same definite, unflinching judgment.  Both used the same clear and direct language.  Both had a certain grim delight in the irony with which they pursued their opponents.  In both it is probable that their unmeasured and unsparing criticism recoiled on the cause which they had at heart.  But in the case of both of them it was not the temper of the satirist, it was no mere love of attacking what was vulnerable, and indulgence in the cruel pleasure of stinging and putting to shame, which inspired them.  Their souls were moved by the dishonour done to religion, by public evils and public dangers.  Both of them died young, before their work was done.  They placed before themselves the loftiest and most unselfish objects, the restoration of truth and goodness in the Church, and to that they gave their life and all that they had.  And what they called on others to be they were themselves.  They were alike in the sternness, the reality, the perseverance, almost unintelligible in its methods to ordinary men, of their moral and spiritual self-discipline.

SUPPLEMENTARY TO CHAPTER III[26]

Hurrell Froude was, when I, as an undergraduate, first knew him in 1828, tall and very thin, with something of a stoop, with a large skull and forehead, but not a large face, delicate features, and penetrating gray eyes, not exactly piercing, but bright with internal conceptions, and ready to assume an expression of amusement, careful attention, inquiry, or stern disgust, but with a basis of softness.  His manner was cordial and familiar, and assured you, as you knew him well, of his affectionate feeling, which encouraged you to speak your mind (within certain limits), subject to the consideration that if you said anything absurd it would not be allowed to fall to the ground.  He had more of the undergraduate in him than any “don” whom I ever knew; absolutely unlike Newman in being always ready to skate, sail, or ride with his friends—­and, if in a scrape, not pharisaical as to his means of getting out of it.  I remember, e.g., climbing Merton gate with him in my undergraduate days, when