st poet whom I really loved, but I
also was fond of Scott's poetry, the _Lays of Ancient Rome_, the _Lays
of the Scottish Cavaliers_, and _The Golden Treasury_. Milton, Shelley,
Wordsworth, and Matthew Arnold came later, but while I was still a boy.
George Eliot, Thackeray, Ruskin, and Trollope came when I was at Oxford;
and I am not sure that Browning ever came. On the whole, I owe my chief
enjoyment to Scott, Dickens, Wordsworth, and Tennyson, and to _Pickwick_
more than to any single book. But I think the keenest thrill of
intellectual pleasure which I ever felt passed through me when, as a boy
at Harrow, I first read Wordsworth's "Daffodils."

Our home, in its outward aspects, was extremely bright and cheerful. We
had, as a family, a keen sense of fun, much contempt for convention, and
great fluency of speech; and our material surroundings were such as to
make life enjoyable. Even as a child, I used to say to myself, when
cantering among Scotch firs and rhododendrons, "The lines are fallen
unto me in pleasant places." A graver element was supplied by a good
deal of ill-health, by bereavements, and, in some sense, by our way of
religion. My home was intensely Evangelical, and I lived from my
earliest days in an atmosphere where the salvation of the individual
soul was the supreme and constant concern of life. No form of
worldliness entered into it, but it was full of good works, of social
service, and of practical labour for the poor. All life was lived, down
to its minutest detail, "as ever in the great task-Master's eye." From
our very earliest years we were taught the Bible, at first orally; and
later on were encouraged to read it, by gifts of handsomely bound
copies. I remember that our aids to study were Adam Clarke's Commentary,
Nicholl's _Help to Reading the Bible_, and a book called _Light in the
Dwelling_. Hymns played a great part in our training. As soon as we
could speak, we learned "When rising from the bed of death," and
"Beautiful Zion, built above." "Rock of Ages" and "Jesu, Lover of my
soul" were soon added. The Church Catechism we were never taught. I was
confirmed without learning it. It was said to be too difficult; it
really was too sacramental. By way of an easier exercise, I was
constrained to learn "The Shorter Catechism of the General Assembly of
Divines at Westminster." We had Family Prayers twice every day. My
father read a chapter, very much as the fancy took him, or where the
Bible opened