It will be seen from the last two letters that his ethical position was settling itself.

I therefore think, before I go any further, it will be as well to give a short account of his religious opinions at this time, as they were very much bound up with his life.  He told me not unfrequently that religion had been nothing whatever to him at school, and he came up to the University impressionable, ardent, like a clean paper ready for any writing.

It is well known that at the Universities there is a good deal of proselytizing; that it is customary for men of marked religious views and high position to have a large clientele of younger men whom they influence and mould; schools of the prophets.

Arthur was not drawn into any one of these completely, though I fancy that he was to a certain extent influenced by the teaching of one of these men.  The living original of these words will pardon me if I here insert the words of my friend relating to him; many Cambridge men have been and are everlastingly grateful for his simple noble influence and example.

“Why are there certain people in this world, who whenever they enter a room have a strange power of galvanizing everybody there into connection with themselves? what mysterious currents do they set in motion to and from them, so that those who do not talk to them or at them, begin to talk with reference to them, hedged about as they are with an atmosphere of desire and command?

“There is one of these at Cambridge now, a man for whom I not only have the profoundest respect, but whose personal presence exercises on me just the fascination I describe; and influential as he is, it is influence more utterly unconscious of its own power than any I have seen—­a rare quality.  He finds all societies into which he enters, stung by his words and looks, serious, sweet, interested in, if not torn by moral and social problems of the deepest import; yet he always fancies that it is they, not he, that are thus potent.  He is not aware that it is he who is saintly; he thinks it is they that are good; and all this, not for want of telling him, for he must be weary of genuine praise and thanks.”

To write thus of any one must imply a deep attraction.  I do not think, however, that the admiration ever extended itself to imitation in matters theoretical or religious.  Arthur was not one of those indiscriminate admirers, blinded by a single radiant quality to accept the whole body as full of light.

Very slowly his convictions crystallized; he had a period of very earnest thought—­during the time of which I have just been speaking—­in which he shunned the subject in conversation; but I have reason to believe from the books he read, and from two or three letters to his friend, the curate of whom I have been speaking, that he was thinking deeply upon revealed religion.

It must, however, be remembered that he never went through that period of agonized uprooting of venerated and cherished sentiment that many whose faith has been very keen and integral in their lives pass through, the dark valley of doubt.  His religion had not intwined itself into his life; it was not shrined among his sacred memories or laid away in secret storehouses of thought.