st
thing she could do. I had no recollection of having tendered to her any
such momentous advice, and Mr. Philpot, who hardly could help smiling,
acquitted me of playing intentionally the part of a disguised Jesuit. I
must, however, have said something on behalf of the mystical Babylon,
for not long afterward I was busy with a theological poem, prominent in
which were the two following lines:

Oh, mother, or city of the sevenfold throne,
We sit beside the severing sea and mourn--

and by way of correcting such defects in my sentiments Mr. Philpot lent
me a work by Archer Butler, a Christian Platonist, who would provide me,
in his opinion, with a religious philosophy incomparably more rational
than the Roman. This work had the result of directing me to certain old
translations of Plotinus and other Neoplatonists of Alexandria; and my
dominant idea for a time was that in Alexandrian mysticism Anglicans
would discover a rock, firmly based, on which they would bring Rome to
her knees, and conquer the whole world.

But such juvenile theologies, and the secret troubles connected with
them, did not seriously interfere with the adventurous optimism of
youth. They did but give a special flavor to the winds blown from the
sea, to the suggestions of the sunsets on which the eyes of youth
looked, and mixed themselves with the verses of Browning, Matthew
Arnold, and Shelley. But a yet more successful rival to the speculations
of Archer Butler and Plotinus was, in my own case, another and a new
poet, who had at that time just made himself famous. This poet was
Swinburne, who had recently given to the world his first _Poems and
Ballads_. That volume, on the ground that it was an outrage on morals
and decency, had been received, when originally published, with such a
howl of execration that the publishers hastily withdrew it, and for some
time it was unobtainable; but at length another firm found courage
enough to undertake its reissue. To Mr. Philpot, who knew it merely by
extracts, the mere mention of this volume seemed to be something in the
nature of an indecency. But there is always an attraction in the
forbidden. I dreamed of this volume, from which I had seen extracts
likewise; and at last a chance came to me of securing an apple from the
boughs of this replanted tree of knowledge.

Among our various dissipations were occasional excursions to Brighton,
and on one of these I was accompanied by a fellow pupil whose fam