“I will look straight out, see things, not try to
          evade them: 
  Fact shall be Fact for me; and the Truth the
          Truth as ever,
  Flexible, changeable, vague, and multiform
          and doubtful.”

Or, again,—­

“Ah, the key of our life, that passes all wards,
opens all locks,
Is not I will, but I must.  I must,—­I must,
—­and I do it.”

And still again,—­

“But for the steady fore-sense of a freer and
larger existence,
Think you that man could consent to be
circumscribed here into action? 
But for assurance within of a limitless ocean
divine, o’er
Whose great tranquil depths unconscious
the wind-tost surface
Breaks into ripples of trouble that come and
change and endure not,—­
But that in this, of a truth, we have our
being, and know it,
Think you we men could submit to live and
move as we do here?”

“To keep on doing right,—­not to speculate only, but to act, not to think only, but to live,”—­was, it has been said, characteristic of the leading men at Oxford during this period.  “It was not so much a part of their teaching as a doctrine woven into their being.”  And while they thus exercised a moral not less than an intellectual influence over their contemporaries and their pupils, they themselves, according to their various tempers and circumstances, were led on into new paths of inquiry or of life.  Some of them fell into the common temptations of an English University career, and lost the freshness of energy and the honesty of conviction which first inspired them; others, holding their places in the established order of things, were able by happy faculties of character to retain also the vigor and simplicity of their early purposes; while others again, among whom was Clough, finding the restraints of the University incompatible with independence, gave up their positions at Oxford to seek other places in which they could more freely search for the truth and express their own convictions.

It was not long after his return from Italy that he became Professor of English Language and Literature at University College, London.  He filled this place, which was not in all respects suited to him, until 1852.  After resigning it, he took various projects into consideration, and at length determined to come to America with the intention of settling here, if circumstances should prove favorable.  In November, 1852, he arrived in Boston.  He at once established himself at Cambridge, proposing to give instruction to young men preparing for college, or to take on in more advanced studies those who had completed the collegiate course.  He speedily won the friendship of those whose friendship was best worth having in Boston and its neighborhood.  His thorough scholarship, the result of the best English training, and his intrinsic qualities caused his society to be sought and prized by the most cultivated and