Of the world outside, of the dim wild whirlpool of London, I was much afraid, but I was now ready to be willing to leave the narrow Devonshire circle, to see the last of the red mud, of the dreary village street, of the plethoric elders, to hear the last of the drawling voices of the ‘Saints’.  Yet I had a great difficulty in persuading myself that I could ever be happy away from home, and again I compared my lot with that of one of the speckled soldier-crabs that roamed about in my Father’s aquarium, dragging after them great whorl-shells.  They, if by chance they were turned out of their whelk-habitations, trailed about a pale soft body in search of another house, visibly broken-hearted and the victims of every ignominious accident.

My spirits were divided pathetically between the wish to stay on, a guarded child, and to proceed into the world, a budding man, and, in my utter ignorance, I sought in vain to conjure up what my immediate future would be.  My Father threw no light upon the subject, for he had not formed any definite idea of what I could possibly do to earn an honest living.  As a matter of fact I was to stay another year at school and home.

This last year of my boyish life passed rapidly and pleasantly.  My sluggish brain waked up at last and I was able to study with application.  In the public examinations I did pretty well, and may even have been thought something of a credit to the school.  Yet I formed no close associations, and I even contrived to avoid, as I had afterwards occasion to regret, such lessons as were distasteful to me, and therefore particularly valuable.  But I read with unchecked voracity, and in several curious directions.  Shakespeare now passed into my possession entire, in the shape of a reprint more hideous and more offensive to the eyesight than would in these days appear conceivable.  I made acquaintance with Keats, who entirely captivated me; with Shelley, whose ‘Queen Mab’ at first repelled me from the threshold of his edifice; and with Wordsworth, for the exercise of whose magic I was still far too young.  My Father presented me with the entire bulk of Southey’s stony verse, which I found it impossible to penetrate, but my stepmother lent me The Golden Treasury, in which almost everything seemed exquisite.

Upon this extension of my intellectual powers, however, there did not follow any spirit of doubt or hostility to the faith.  On the contrary, at first there came a considerable quickening of fervour.  My prayers became less frigid and mechanical; I no longer avoided as far as possible the contemplation of religious ideas; I began to search the Scriptures for myself with interest and sympathy, if scarcely with ardour.  I began to perceive, without animosity, the strange narrowness of my Father’s system, which seemed to take into consideration only a selected circle of persons, a group of disciples peculiarly illuminated, and to have no message whatever for the wider Christian community.