As to the desserts upon which the young men in turn were spending a good deal out of mere custom, harmlessly enough, but unnecessarily; as soon as the distress of the potato famine in Ireland became known, Patteson said, ’I am not at all for giving up these pleasant meetings, but why not give up the dessert?’ So the agreement was made that the cost should for the present be made over to the ’Irish fund.’

Another friend of this period, now well known as Principal Shairp of St. Andrews’, was then in the last year of a five years’ residence.  He has been kind enough to favour me with the following effective sketch of Coley as an undergraduate:—­

’Patteson as he was at Oxford, comes back to me, as the representative of the very best kind of Etonian, with much good that he had got from Eton, with something better, not to be got at Eton or any other school.  He had those pleasant manners and that perfect ease in dealing with men and with the world which are the inheritance of Eton, without the least tincture of worldliness.  I remember well the look he then had, his countenance massive for one so young, with good sense and good feeling, in fact, full of character.  For it was character more than special ability which marked him out from others, and made him, wherever he was, whether in cricket in which he excelled, or in graver things, a centre round which others gathered.  The impression he left on me was of quiet, gentle strength and entire purity, a heart that loved all things true and honest and pure, and that would always be found on the side of these.  We did not know, probably he did not know himself, the fire of devotion that lay within him, but that was soon to kindle and make him what he afterwards became.’

In truth he was taking deep interest in the religious movement, though in the quiet unexcited way of those to whom such doctrines were only the filling out of the teachings of their childhood.  He was present at that sermon on the ’Entire Absolution of the Penitent,’ with which, on the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, 1846, Dr. Pusey broke his enforced silence of three years.

The same evening Coley wrote to his sister Fanny:—­

’I have just returned from University sermon, where I have been listening with great delight to Pusey’s sermon on the Keys for nearly two hours.  His immense benevolence beams through the extreme power of his arguments, and the great research of his inquiry into all the primitive writings is a most extraordinary matter, and as for the humility and prayerful spirit in which it was composed, you fancied he must have been on his knees the whole time he was writing it.  I went early to Christ Church, where it was preached, and, after pushing through such a crowd as usually blocks up the entrance into Exeter Hall, I found on getting into the Cathedral that every seat was occupied.  However, standing to hear such a man was no great exertion, and I never was