into a volume of Metaphysics, and moralizing on the bucolic order of intellect, arrived at home.

66

Strange news awaited him; Dick, the bed-maker, had received a call." Dick was a character; he entered the college as Boots at the age of sixteen, but soon got above his business, and hankered after the pulpit-work the students were engaged in. He obtained cheap preaching-jobs on the sly when it was his Sunday out, used to get lessons from the younger students in Divinity and Greek, and would practise pulpit-oratory whenever and wherever he was alone. One day Henry heard a fierce declamatory exercise going on in the next room to his own; listening, he heard the voice of Dick, as though preaching, and, peeping through the half-open door, was intensely amused to see the bed-maker, now plunging at the feather-bed, now vigorously shaking the bolster, as he fiercely addressed them as the enemies of the Lord.

“The Lord shall awake as a giant refreshed" (a plunge at the bed); "He shall thrash the nations as wheat" (terrible pummelling for the feathers); “He shall winnow them as chaff" (fearful shaking at the ticking); "He shall rule them with a rod of iron; He shall dash them in pieces as a potter's vessel" (frightful assault on the bolster and pillows); "He shall sweep them away in His fierce wrath "-here the bedclothes were sent flying to the other end of the room, and Henry's escaped merriment stopped the fun. Dick settled on 40l. a year, but is a rising man.

Q

CHAPTER XVIII.

COLLEGE FRIENDS.

HENRY had many friends at Bunyan, but as usually happens, one special favourite was selected who soon became more than a brother to him. Far dearer to him than James Dalton at the hospital ever had been, was Albert Wells, though his old medical companion was still a valued friend and constant visitor at his lodgings, which ere long Henry found expedient to remove nearer to the college. It was in the summer of 18- that he found his increasing literary occupations took up more time than he could afford unless he strictly economized it ; and the distance of Hatchley Colne from the college rendered it advisable to remove from it. Lucy regretted the necessity for this step though she did not oppose it. Albert Wells was a congenial spirit to Henry; both were earnest, passionate, and spirituel, as the French say; both had chosen the ministry from a desire to save the souls of men. Albert was, however, far superior in genius to Henry, his tone loftier and his spirit more refined. He seemed to live in the abstract and ideal, his was a world of poetry and sentiment, and if his plans for helping mankind were lofty and noble, they were too transcendental and Quixotic to be in any sense practicable. Hard work and friction against the daily cares of a business life would have made a useful man of Albert. The Bunyan studies would have helped him could they have been separated from the spirit of the house. As it was, college life speedily exercised an evil influence over him. It was injuring Henry, but it was ruining Albert. The latent fire in the flint is not discovered

till its contact with the steel; the dead, dull, cold crystal seems incapable of a single brilliant gleam till the sun calls it forth; and many a dull, matter-of-fact youth entered Bunyan without a brilliant idea in poetic thought, who, by attrition against the strong intellects around him, soon began to display a sparkling genius that might have slept unheeded had he followed his old career.

It was the current opinion in the college, more especially with the students, that the Royal road to wisdom was poetry. One of their axioms was, that in the poets you had all that was necessary to make one happy and wise. So, though many a man entered the place who had never read a line of Tennyson or Wordsworth, he soon found he should be left behind in the race if he did not join the poetic band of explorers, whose aim was ever to light on some new territory of thought, or add a new planet to the chart of the mental firmament. We have Shakspeare's authority for classing the poet with the lunatic, and it is certain the morbid taste for poetry at the college was the ruin of many a fine young man's mind; true, the tutors seeing the evil, tried to steady the vessel with a good ballast of Greek roots and Hebrew inflections, but the encumbrance was too often cast overboard, and many a fine ship became a wreck through an inordinate desire to sail farther than any other explorer had ever been before, and find out some terra incognita that should make a mental Columbus of the fortunate voyager. To follow in the beaten track of thought, and not attempt to strike out a path through the surrounding country, was a thing not to be borne by these ambitious spirits. "The New" rather than "the True" was the object of their search, and many a skeleton now bleaches in the arid waste, the prey of

this feverish desire for novelty. Albert Wells, full of youthful ardour, graced with glorious mental gifts, with a spirit which under proper training might have become a beacon light on the mountains of fame, and a star in the vault of heaven, became, alas ! a mere phosphorescent glow, a meteor dashing rocket-like along the sky to die out in blackness, and sink into darkness for ever. Oh Heresy ! Oh Pride, your accursed parent! who shall write out the indictment of your myriad murders, or count the tombs where lie your slain? Cruel War! how many victims hath your insatiate appetite destroyed? Relentless Plague! gaunt Famine! and destructive Elements ! shall there be no period to your havock amongst the human race, and must ye ever pursue our kind with relentless hate? Suffice not the hecatombs of victims past, and will not the heaps of your dead content you yet? Alas! you still pursue, and we still fall before you. Yet it would be

well for us were ye our worst foes. You only seek our bodies, and are content with physical pain and corporeal death. But heresy more cruel than famine that denies us sustenance, more dreadful than pestilence that blasts our life, in a thousand insidious forms wanders in our midst, and points the poisoned dart of hell at our souls. You seek out the gifted, the brilliant, the strong from amongst us, and you taint them with the venom of the old serpent, and we glory in the ruin, and pride ourselves on our corruption.

The Nonconformist alumni of the present day play with infidelity, and nurse in their bosoms the serpent that destroys them.

German philosophy and negative theology found an easy prey in the impulsive and generous Albert Wells. He soon found little glory was to be gained by following the teaching he had imbibed at his cradle.

"Let me find out for myself a scheme of religion," said he; "let my relations with the Unseen be of my own contracting; I will begin de novo, and will myself be my own director in my dealing with the Divine." He soon declared himself without any creed, the only true idea to his notion of a student; as in mathematics, so in theology, he would take nothing for granted. "Proof," he cried, "show me your credentials!" So he turned his articles of faith out of doors, and proceeded to unfurnish the chambers of his mind, and arrange for the admission of fresh guests, who should prove their title ere they were admitted.

It was upon the doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible that he first seriously attacked Henry, and it was here he found means to pierce the too weak armour that protected his orthodoxy. It was soon observed with pleasure amongst the young men that Henry's mind was yielding to doubt. It was their maxim that there was no hope for him in the pursuit of knowledge until it did yield; they held with Tennyson,— "There is more faith in honest doubt, than in half the creeds."

Believe me,

So they welcomed the new explorer, and did their best to widen the breach in the walls their gifted companion had succeeded in making.

It was not with any great alarm the tutors observed, one after the other, the students falling into rationalism. All would be right in the end they thought, and a little travelling and mental wild oats' sowing would do the young men no particular harm. Of course they expected their doubts would all be scattered to the winds when they came to settle and appear before the world as recognized leaders of thought in the Dissenting world.