A contemporary at Oxford writes, with reference to the same period:  “When we went up, Liddon was preaching his Bamptons, and we went to them together, and were much moved by them.  There were three of us who always met for Friday teas in one another’s rooms, and during Lent we used to go to the Special Sermons at St. Mary’s.  We always went to Liddon’s sermons, and sometimes to his Sunday evening lectures in the Hall of Queen’s College.  We used to go to the Choral Eucharist in Merton Chapel, and, later, to the iron church at Cowley, and to St. Barnabas, and enjoyed shouting the Gregorians.”

On the intellectual side, we are told that Holland’s love of literature was already marked.  “I can remember reading Wordsworth with him, and Carlyle, and Clough; and, after Sunday breakfasts, Boswell’s Life of Johnson.”  Then, as always, he found a great part of his pleasure in music.

No record, however brief, of an undergraduate life can afford to disregard athletics; so let it be here recorded that Holland played racquets and fives, and skated, and “jumped high,” and steered the Torpid, and three times rowed in his College Eight.  He had innumerable friends, among whom three should be specially recalled:  Stephen Fremantle and R. L. Nettleship, both of Balliol, and W. H. Ady, of Exeter.  In short, he lived the life of the model undergraduate, tasting all the joys of Oxford, and finding time to spare for his prescribed studies.  His first encounter with the examiners, in “Classical Moderations,” was only partially successful.  “He did not appreciate the niceties of scholarship, and could not write verses or do Greek or Latin prose at all well;” and he was accordingly placed in the Third Class.  But as soon as the tyranny of Virgil and Homer and Sophocles was overpast, he betook himself to more congenial studies.  Of the two tutors who then made Balliol famous, he owed nothing to Jowett and everything to T. H. Green.  That truly great man “simply fell in love” with his brilliant pupil, and gave him of his best.

“Philosophy’s the chap for me,” said an eminent man on a momentous occasion.  “If a parent asks a question in the classical, commercial, or mathematical-line, says I gravely, ’Why, sir, in the first place, are you a philosopher?’ ‘No, Mr. Squeers,’ he says, ‘I ain’t.’  ‘Then, sir,’ says I, ’I am sorry for you, for I shan’t be able to explain it.’  Naturally, the parent goes away and wishes he was a philosopher, and, equally naturally, thinks I’m one.”

That is the Balliol manner all over; and the ardent Holland, instructed by Green, soon discovered, to his delight, that he was a philosopher, and was henceforward qualified to apply Mr. Squeer’s searching test to all questions in Heaven and earth.  “It was the custom at Balliol for everyone to write an essay once a week, and I remember that Holland made a name for his essay-writing and originality.  It was known that he had a good chance of a ‘First