Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. HUERELL FBOUDE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN VOYAGE. The friendship between Newman and Mr. Hurrell Fronde, the elder brother of the historian, which commenced in 1826, and became intimate in 1829, lasting thence to Mr. Froude's death from consumption in 1836, was certainly one of the most important influences which acted on Newman's career at the most critical period of his life. Newman's was one of the minds which matured slowly, and it was not till he was twenty-six years of age that it became clear whether he would be in the main a religious leader or one of the pillars of the Whately party, that is, the party who threw their influence into the scale of minimizing the spiritual aspect and spiritual significance of revelation rather than of maximizing it. Newman himself mentions, that for two or three years before 1827 he was "beginning to prefer intellectual excellence to moral," or in other words, "drifting in the direction of Liberalism." " I was rudely awakened from my dream at the end of 1827 by two great blows, illness and bereavement," and then in 1829 came fuller intimacy with Hurrell Froude, which seems to have fully determined, if anything werethen needed to determine, the direction in which his mind would proceed. Mr. Hurrell Froude was, as Newman describes him, a man of the highest gifts—gentle, tender, playful, versatile, and of the most winning patience and considerateness in discussion. He was a man of high genius, " brimful and overflowing with ideas and views, in him original, which were too many and strong even for his bodily strength, and which crowded and jostled against each other in their effort after distinct shape and expression. And he had an intellect as critical and logical as it was speculative and bold. He professed openly his admiration o...