Mr. Froude is too able a man to seek to pass crude eulogy of Henry VIII. upon the world. He knows that the reason why this or that or the other thing was done is what his readers will demand, and he does his best to meet their requirements. Very plausible, and very well sustained by numerous facts, as well as by philosophical theory, is the position which he assumes in reference to Henry's conduct. Henry, according to the Froudean theory, was troubled about the succession to the throne. His great purpose was to prevent the renewal of civil war in England, a war for the succession. When he divorced Catharine of Aragon, when he married Anne Boleyn, when he libelled and murdered Anne Boleyn, when he wedded Jane Seymour, when he became disgusted with and divorced Anne of Cleves, when he married and when he beheaded Catharine Howard, when he patronized, used, and rewarded Cromwell, and when he sent Cromwell to the scaffold and refused to listen to his plaintive plea for mercy, when he caused Plantagenet and Neville blood to flow like water from the veins of old women as well as from those of young men, when he hanged Catholics and burned Protestants, when he caused Surrey to lose the finest head in England,--in short, no matter what he did, he always had his eye steadily fixed across that boiling sea of blood that he had created upon one grand point, namely, the preservation of the internal peace of England, not only while he himself should live, but after his death. His son, or whoso should be his heir, must succeed to an undisputed inheritance, even if it should be necessary to make away with all the nobility of the realm, and most of the people, in order to secure the so-much-desired quiet. Church-yards were to be filled in order that all England might be reduced to the condition of a church-yard. That _Red Spectre_ which has so often frightened even sensible men since 1789, and caused some remarkably humiliating displays of human weakness during our generation and its immediate predecessor, was, it should seem, ever present to the eyes of Henry VIII. He saw Anarchy perpetually struggling to get free from those bonds in which Henry VIII. had confined that monster, and he cut off nearly every man or woman in whose name a plea for the crown could be set up as against a Tudor prince or princess. Like his father, to use Mr. Froude's admirable expression, "he breathed an atmosphere of suspended insurrection," and he was fixed and firm in his purpose to deprive all rebelliously disposed people of their leaders, or of those to whom they would naturally look for lead and direction. The axe was kept continually striking upon noble necks, and the cord was as continually stretched by ignoble bodies, because the King was bent upon making insurrection a failing business at the best. Men and women, patrician and plebeian, might play at rebellion, if they liked it, but they should be made to find that they were playing the losing game.