A Chat About New Books [pp. 124-137]

A CHA7 ABOUT NEW BOOKS.
these familiar letters, shows frankly that all literary effort not his
own is indifferent to him.
"At General Baudraud's," he writes in I845, "besides Washington Irving, whom I think vulgar and stupid, I met Lamennais; extremely able and
interesting, talks admirably, without the slightest effort or affectation; indeed, simplicity is his characteristic; he is not taller than Tom Moore, very
delicate and advanced in life, for which I was not prepared. Not so old as
Baron de Cetto's father, whom he has just left at his castle near Ratisbon,
aged ninety-five and quite hale."
He mentions having heard the opera of "Lucrezia Borgia" in
company with a descendant of the Borgias, who amiably said
that "his family must have degenerated, since he had never done
such dreadful things." Hie rejoices maliciously over "Johnny's"
(Lord John Russell) famous No-Popery letter of I850:
"The Irish are frantic. I think he wants to hark back, and the silence
of the Timnes, after all its agitation, is very suspicious. If he goes on with
the Protestant movement, he will be thrown over by the Papists; if he
shuffles with the Protestants, their blood is too high to be silent now, and
they will come to us. I think Johnny is checkmated. The Dean of St.
Paul's told my informant that he had seen the letter Lord John wrote to
the Bishop of London a week before his letter to the Bishop of Durham,
and it was quite on a contrary tack."
It is not often that one is able to obtain, in such small space,
so clear an insight into the cold and cynical means by which nations are ruled and fooled.
Mr. James Anthony Froude protests that he is "an old man,"
but in his new book, Oceana; or, England and Her Colonies (New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons), he chatters like a very young
one. He is a devoted Tory, whatever he may pretend to be.
Mr. Froude's Oceana seems to be written to prove two things:
that the British colonies, that is, all those that come under the
title of Oceana-the Australasian ones-love England, but hate
Mr. Gladstone.
" Kind words," he says, "cost nothing, and kind words would be precious to these far-off relations of ours, for they would show that the heart of
England was with them."
Could anything be more suggestive of the grand old Tory
opinion of dependants than this? Mr. Froude would not give
the colonies any concession that would "cost anything." Kind
words are enough-" cheap and filling," to borrow London slang.
But English dependencies have long ago learned that acts and
sacrifices are more to be depended on as signs of heartfelt interest
I36
[April,