Yesterday we had here what at Cambridge used to be called a 'Perpendicular,' twenty students to supper. Mrs. Butcher and Miss Trench came in to help to entertain them; the latter sang Irish songs.
I am going to give an additional lecture to the class on the controversy in 'Nature.'[89]
I send you a report of my lecture, that you may see how orthodox I was. Sellar[90] was at the lecture, and told me that I reminded him of some professor at St. Andrews, who had told him as a fact that he (the St. Andrews professor) always made a point of alluding to Providence in an introductory lecture, and afterwards 'threw him aside!'
The sonnet alluded to in one of the letters (p. 265) is so beautiful that it is inserted here. It shows better than any words could do the attitude of George Romanes' mind. Profoundly sincere, anxious, almost unduly anxious, to give no indulgence to his own longings, to state to himself and to others unsparingly, unflinchingly, what appeared to him the as yet irrefutable arguments against the Faith, when he was alone he relaxed and poured out his inmost heart.
'I ask not for Thy love, O Lord: the days
Can never come when anguish shall atone.
Enough for me were but Thy pity shown,
To me as to the stricken sheep that strays,
With ceaseless cry for unforgotten ways—
O lead me back to pastures I have known,