on
his father's account; nor Thomas Durrant Philip, the son of the
well-known doctor whose splendid work among the Hottentots is not yet
forgotten; nor Dr. Edkins, the great Chinese scholar; nor the late Dr.
Henry Robert Reynolds, who won for Cheshunt a world-wide reputation. As
regards myself, I fear I took more interest in the debates at University
College, where I made acquaintance with men with whose names the world
has since become familiar, such as Sir James Stansfeld, Peter Taylor,
M.P. for Leicester, Professor Waley, of Jewish persuasion, C. J.
Hargreaves, Baron of the Encumbered Estates Court, and others who seemed
to me far superior to most of my fellow-students training for the
Christian ministry. I was much interested in the English Literature
Class under the late Dr. Gordon Latham, the great Anglo-Saxon scholar,
who would fain have had me Professor in his place.

I cannot say that I look back with much pleasure on my college career.
We had two heads, neither of whom had any influence with the students,
nor did it seem to me desirable that they should. One of them was an
easy, pleasant, gentlemanly man, who was pleased to remark on an essay
which I read before him on Christianity, and which was greeted with a
round of applause by my fellow-students, that it displayed a low tone of
religious feeling. Poor man, he did not long survive after that. The
only bit of advice I had from his successor was as to the propriety of
closing my eyes as if in prayer whenever I went into the pulpit to
preach, on the plea, not that by means of it my heart might be solemnised
and elevated for the ensuing service, but that it would have a beneficial
effect on the people--that, in fact, on account of it they would think
all the better of me! After that, you may be sure I got little benefit
from anything the good man might feel fit to say. As a scholar he was
nowhere. All that I recollect of him was that he gave us D'Aubigne's
History of the Reformation in driblets as if we were rather a superior
class of Sunday scholars. Mr. Stowell Brown tells us that he did not
perceive that the members of his church were in any respect better than
those who were hearers alone. And to me something similar was manifested
in college. We pious students were not much better than other young men.
It seemed to me that we were a little more lazy and flabby, that was all.
As a rule, few of us broke down morally, though such cases were by no