only my occupation, but that of the whole family, to put an end to everything which can annoy him. ‘You will readily see, dear Sir, that our situation is very difficult and very distressing. He is too old for any correction but that of his own reason; and how to influence that, I know not! Your advice will greatly oblige ‘A very anxious parent, ‘M. F. ‘_P.S._――I have complained to him seriously of this day, and I thought he must have been hurt; but I am sorry to say that he has whistled almost ever since.’ The kind relative, who was so ungraciously repaid for her goodness, was his aunt Miss Mary Spedding, the eldest of all her family, devoted to her only sister Margaret, and to that sister’s memory; the baby brother, who must have conceived of the wolf as a perseveringly disagreeable animal, was James Anthony Froude, then nearly two years old. A year later, on February 16, 1821, Margaret Froude breathed her lovely soul away, and was laid to rest next the south porch of Dartington Church, where her children’s feet passed in and out on Sunday mornings over the flagstones, between the first spring flowers. ‘The Froudes were eight in family,’ wrote Isaac Williams, on a happy visit long after. On the morrow of their bereavement, this was the junior roll-call in Robert Froude’s desolate Parsonage: Richard Hurrell, aged not quite eighteen. Robert Hurrell, aged sixteen years, ten months. John Spedding, just fourteen. Margaret, aged twelve years, nine months. Phillis Jane, nearly eleven and a half. William, aged ten years, three months. Mary Isabella, not quite seven and a half. James Anthony, under three. Hurrell Froude was admitted Commoner by the University of Oxford and matriculated at Oriel College, within a few weeks of his mother’s death, on April 13, 1821. His delicate health had kept him back: his father and his brothers all matriculated at seventeen. Robert Froude, ‘Bob,’ was then entering upon his Sixth Form at Eton. Little Margaret began at once, under guidance, her tender and long continued task of comforting her father and mothering the motherless. She found no time to seek her own happiness, till her marriage in 1844,[13] when only her father and herself, William and Anthony, survived. John Spedding Froude died in 1841, thirty-four years old, and, like his two elder brothers, unmarried. Of Phillis, William, Mary, and (James) Anthony, Hurrell’s own annals will have more to say. Beside one of the leafy winding roads of Dartington rose afterwards a little grey almshouse, and over the doorway a stone tablet with this inscription: ‘IMPENSIS MARIAE SPEDDING PIA RECORDATIONE SORORIS SUAE MARGARETAE FROUDE HAEC DOMUS IN PERPETUAM ELEEMOSYNAM EXTRUCTA EST. AGELLUM CIRCUMJACENTEM IN EOSDEM USUS EROGAVIT HENRICUS CHAMPERNOWNE. A.D. MDCCCXXXV.’