himself, in the act of doing it. “The chief reason,” he says, “for my being interested in any object, is the fact that I happen to be pursuing it,” “nor can I look with serious feeling on the miseries of anyone but my own. The blight of God is on me for my selfish life.” … Is “irony” a term quite strong enough to denote this savage, sarcastic self-laceration, which, if persisted in, would result in moral and spiritual suicide? So far, it would seem that the two friends resembled each other in almost every one of their principles of religious thought. A religion of fear; a profound sense of an awful Holiness; an absence of general loving-kindness and human-heartedness; a vast and almost servile respect for power as power; an inclination to asceticism, in the older of the two as a test of sincerity, but in the younger, rather as a means of suppressing the passions; a dread of wilfulness, and a rooted suspicion of self,――these feelings appear to have been, in both, so powerful and original, that whatever influence either might exert upon the other would result, not in changing, but in confirming and hardening; or at most, in suggesting some new application of the theories common to both. ‘We now pass to the only principle in which the two seem first to have differed, but ultimately to have agreed. This principle (if it may be so called) is that of tact or management, especially in the diffusion, colouring, and sometimes in the reservation or suppression, of religious doctrine, with a view to surmounting prejudice and instilling truth. To this, Newman (though not the first to use the word in this sense) gave the name of “economy.” There are many reasons for concluding that in this one respect Froude was passive, a simple recipient from Newman…. Froude anticipated, and endeavoured to develop precipitately, the logical results, both of the principles which they held in common, and of those which he instilled into his friend, and also of this particular principle which alone his friend seems to have instilled into him. Such a development may be often noticed, when a strong-willed man who sees only one side of a question, takes up a plan invented by another who sees many. The inventor may be moderate; the adopter carries the invention to excess. Froude was at that time (1834) dragging Newman onwards towards Roman doctrine; but he may have submitted to learn from Newman the best method of diffusing it. He did not like the method, and therefore he called it by bad names, such as “undermining,” “poisoning,” and the like….