nd a devoted reading of the poets. I don't suppose the
temperament was more inclined to aesthetic emotion in me than in
other youths; but I was highly nervous and delicate, and having
never been at school had not had sentiment and delicacy crushed out
of me; also, living on the borderland of oak woods, with green
lanes before me, and an expanse of wild heather extending into
Northumberland behind, I was favourably placed for imbibing a
knowledge by contrast of the physical features of England. My eye
was formed to take in at a glance, and to receive delight from
contemplating, as a whole, a hill and valley formation. Geology did
not come in till ten years later to complete the cycle of thought,
and to give that intellectual foundation which is required to make
the testimony of the eye, roaming over an undulating surface,
fruitful and satisfying. When I came in after years to read _The
Prelude_ I recognised, as if it were my own history which was being
told, the steps by which the love of the country-boy for his hills
and moors grew into poetical susceptibility for all imaginative
presentations of beauty in every direction (pp. 34, 35).

Perhaps it may be added that this was a preparation for something more
than merely poetical susceptibility. By substituting for the definite
intellectual impressions of a systematic education, vague sensibilities
as the foundation of character, this growth of sentiment, delicacy, and
feeling for imaginative presentations of beauty, laid him peculiarly
open to the religious influences that were awaiting him in days to come
at Oxford.

In 1832 Pattison went up as a freshman to Oriel. His career as an
undergraduate was externally distinguished by nothing uncommon, and
promised nothing remarkable. He describes himself as shy, awkward,
boorish, and mentally shapeless and inert. In 1833, however, he felt
what he describes as the first stirrings of intellectual life within
him. 'Hitherto I have had no mind, properly so-called, merely a boy's
intelligence, receptive of anything I read or heard. I now awoke to the
new idea of finding the reason of things; I began to suspect that I
might have much to unlearn, as well as to learn, and that I must clear
my mind of much current opinion which had lodged there. The principle of
rationalism was born in me, and once born it was sure to grow, and to
become the master ide