rain as he stood there by St. Mary's Church, with Oriel
College in front of him, thoughts of his own struggles and triumphs,
and of all the great souls that had passed to and fro over the
pavement around him; and all set in the lurid background of the
undergraduate life to which he had been condemned as a servitor at
Christ Church."

Was he happy in his many years' work at Clifton? On the whole, and with
some reservation, we may say 'yes'--'yes,' although in the end he escaped
from it gladly and enjoyed his escape. One side of him, no doubt, loathed
formality and routine; he was, as he often proclaimed himself, a
nature-loving, somewhat intractable Celt; and if one may hint at a fault
in him, it was that now and then he soon _tired_. A man so spendthrift of
emotion is bound at times to knock on the bottom of his emotional coffers;
and no doubt he was true _to a mood_ when he wrote--

"I'm here at Clifton, grinding at the mill
My feet for thrice nine barren years have trod,
But there are rocks and waves at Scarlett still,
And gorse runs riot in Glen Chass--thank God!

"Alert, I seek exactitude of rule,
I step and square my shoulders with the squad,
But there are blaeberries on old Barrule,
And Langness has its heather still--thank God!"

--With the rest of the rebellious stanzas. We may go farther and allow
that he played with the mood until he sometimes forgot on which side lay
seriousness and on which side humour. Still it _was_ a mood; and it was
Brown, after all, who wrote 'Planting':--

"Who would be planted chooseth not the soil
Or here or there,
Or loam or peat,
Wherein he best may grow
And bring forth guerdon of the planter's toil--
The lily is most fair,
But says not' I will only blow
Upon a southern land'; the cedar makes no coil
What rock shall owe
The springs that wash his feet;
The crocus cannot arbitrate the foil
That for his purple radiance is most meet--
Lord, even so
I ask one prayer,
The which if it be granted,
It skills not where
Thou plantest me, only I would be planted."

"You don't care for school-work," he writes to an Old Cliftonian.
. . . "I demur to your statement that when you take up
schoolmastering your leisure for this kind of thing will be
practicall