‘While we were at Rome [Newman] and I tried hard to get up the march-of-mind phraseology about pictures and statues, and we hoped we were making some little progress under the auspices of a clever English artist, to whom we had an introduction: but, unfortunately for our peace of mind, just before our departure we became acquainted with [a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge], who, though he had not been in Italy much longer than ourselves, had attained an eminence so far beyond what we could even in thought aspire to, that we gave the thing up in despair, and retire upon the τόπος, that “we don’t enter into [those] technicalities.” Certainly those C[ambridge] men are wonderful fellows; I know no one but [Head][124] that could compete with them at all. They know everything, examine everything, and dogmatise about everything; they have paid particular attention to the geological structure of this place, and the botany of that, and the agriculture of another, and they are antiquaries, and artists, and scholars, and, above all, puff off one another with the assiduity of our friends the [W.]s. W[hewell’s][125] book, and S[edgwick’s][126] Lectures, and T[hirlwall’s][127] research, and H[are’s][128] taste, pop upon one at every turn…. We mean to make as much as we can out of our acquaintance with Monsignor [Wiseman], who (by the by), is really too nice a person to talk nonsense about. He desired me to apply to him, if on any future occasion I had to consult the Vatican Library: and a transaction of that sort would sound well….’ The ‘transaction would sound well’: this, as if the writer’s study were only to heighten others’ opinion of him! Newman was surely right in calling attention, years after, to this habit of Froude’s of depreciating, nay, belying, his own motives. It was not an affectation, but it was a little piece of sheer cruelty. The friends had parted at Rome, the Froudes very loath to leave Newman behind; and he, on his part, roaming about the Janiculum after they had gone, in a silent passion of grief, reproaching himself for his wilful fancy to return, under a sort of romantic obsession, to Sicily alone. There he was all but destined to meet an untimely death. Hurrell finished his long letter to Mr. Christie as he moved homeward.