“Clough’s was a mind which, under any circumstances, would have thrown itself into the deepest speculative thought of its time.  He seems soon to have passed through the mere ecclesiastical debatings to the deep questions which lay below them.  There was one lesson—­probably one only—­which he had never been able to learn from his great master, namely, to acknowledge that there are problems which intellectually are not to be solved by man, and before these to sit down quietly.  Whether it were from the harass of thought on such matters which interfered with his regular work, or from one of those strange miscarriages in the most perfect of examining machines, which every now and then deprive the best men of the highest honors, to the surprise of every one Clough missed his first class.  But he completely retrieved this academical mishap shortly afterwards by gaining an Oriel fellowship.  In his new college, the college of Pusey, Newman, Keble, Marriott, Wilberforce, presided over by Dr. Hawkins, and in which the influence of Whately, Davidson, and Arnold had scarcely yet died out, he found himself in the very centre and eye of the battle.  His own convictions were by this time leading him far away from both sides in the Oxford contest; he, however, accepted a tutorship at the college, and all who had the privilege of attending them will long remember his lectures on logic and ethics.  His fault (besides a shy and reserved manner) was that he was much too long-suffering to youthful philosophic coxcombry, and would rather encourage it by his gentle ‘Ah! you think so?’ or, ’Yes, but might not such and such be the case?’”

Clough was at Oxford in 1847,—­the year of the terrible Irish famine, and with others of the most earnest men at the University he took part in an association which had for its object “Retrenchment for the sake of the Irish.”  Such a society was little likely to be popular with the comfortable dignitaries or the luxurious youth of the University.  Many objections, frivolous or serious as the case might be, were raised against so subversive a notion as that of the self-sacrifice of the rich for the sake of the poor.  Disregarding all personal considerations, Clough printed a pamphlet entitled, “A Consideration of Objections against the Retrenchment Association,” in which he met the careless or selfish arguments of those who set themselves against the efforts of the society.  It was a characteristic performance.  His heart was deeply stirred by the harsh contrast between the miseries of the Irish poor and the wasteful extravagance of living prevalent at Oxford.  He wrote with vehement indignation against the selfish pleas of the indifferent and the thoughtless possessors of wealth, wasters of the goods given them as a trust for others.  His words were chiefly addressed to the young men at the University,—­and they were not without effect.  Such views of the rights and duties of property as he put forward, of the claims of labor, and of the responsibilities of the aristocracy,