wearing out; and as the images of impudent undergraduates fade away from the field of my fancy, and the consciousness of what I am released from becomes less vivid, a new host of evil genii take possession of the deserted spot. Till within this last week or so, I felt quite differently from what I ever used to, and reckoned myself to have become quite a cheerful fellow; but now I begin to see with my old eyes, and to feed upon the dreams of faëryland.
‘“And as I mark the line of light that plays
O’er the smooth wave towards the burning west,
I long to tread that golden path of rays,
And think ’twould lead to some bright Isle of Rest.”
… I have a brother now at home who is coming to Oriel next term, and will make a very good hand at mathematics unless he is very idle.’
The brother at home referred to was William Froude, afterwards LL.D. (Glasgow) and F.R.S., then newly come from Westminster School. He was entered at Oriel on Oct. 23, 1828, with Hurrell for Tutor.
To the Rev. John Keble, Aug. 26, 1828.
‘… I have long been meditating a letter to you, and have put it off from day to day, in hopes that when the fine weather should come at last, it might rekindle in me some spark of poetical feeling. But I was thinking over with myself last night how I could scrape up a verse or two in honour of this long-wished-for revolution, and was, after some fruitless pains, obliged to abandon the undertaking. It is a melancholy fact, yet full often does it force itself upon me, and in too unquestionable a shape, that I get stupider as I get older; and that I either never was what I used to think myself, or that Nature has recalled her misused favours! In vain is it that night after night I have tried to peep through the clouds at Lyra and Cassiopeia, as they chase one another round the pole, and that I have got up at three to see Mercury rise, when he was at his longest distance from the sun; and that I have sailed to Guernsey on a fine day and come back on a finer, when the waves washed in on the deck as each passed in succession; and that (when for a short time off the island in a
calm) I found the latitude within a minute by taking the sun’s meridian altitude, and that I have seen him rise out of the water, cut in two by the horizon as sharp as a knife. “This brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire,—what seemeth it to me but a pestilent congregation of vapours?” I can partly account for it from the fact that we are so uncommonly comfortable and cosy here, and quite agree with you, that “home by mazy streams” is not the most bracing school in which the recipient of habits can be disciplined.