brute forces of destruction, and only to substitute one superstition for another. The rough enthusiast blurts out his convictions; or, as he puts it, speaks the plain truth and disregards the consequences. Froude could appreciate Erasmus, but his position always forces him to approve Luther. By temperament, I think, he was really of the Erasmus persuasion. Nobody could be more convinced of human stupidity; of the imperfections of all creeds, and the futility of the ordinary Utopias. If he had written his history from this point of view, he might have drawn a forcible picture of the process by which the human race blunders along; each side mistaking partial truth for the whole; masking selfish and grovelling motives under a professed love of truth, and persecuting and massacring in the name of pure religion. He would have been an impartial, if a pessimistic, observer, and to him, as to Gibbon, history would have been a long register of crime, folly, and misfortune. But Froude was an Erasmus in need of a Luther. He must have some prophet to follow, and has taken Carlyle for his Luther. He and Ruskin were the master's two disciples. Ruskin's pessimism and contempt for the popular creed were as vehement as Froude's.
