pers there were
continual reports about my intentions; I did not answer them:
presently strangers or friends wrote, begging to be allowed to answer
them; and if I still kept to my resolution and said nothing, then I
was thought to be mysterious, and a prejudice was excited against me.
But what was far worse, there were a number of tender, eager hearts,
of whom I knew nothing at all, who were watching me, wishing to think
as I thought, and to do as I did, if they could but find it out; who
in consequence were distrest that in so solemn a matter they could not
see what was coming, and who heard reports about me this way or that,
on a first day and on a second; and felt the weariness of waiting, and
the sickness of delayed hope, and did not understand that I was as
perplexed as they were, and being of more sensitive complexion of mind
than myself, they were made ill by the suspense. And they too, of
course, for the time thought me mysterious and inexplicable. I ask
their pardon as far as I was really unkind to them....

I left Oxford for good on Monday, February 23d, 1846. On the Saturday
and Sunday before, I was in my house at Littlemore simply by myself,
as I had been for the first day or two when I had originally taken
possession of it. I slept on Sunday night at my dear friend's, Mr.
Johnson's, at the Observatory. Various friends came to see the last
of me: Mr. Copeland, Mr. Church, Mr. Buckle, Mr. Pattison, and Mr.
Lewis. Dr. Pusey too came up to take leave of me; and I called on Dr.
Ogle, one of my very oldest friends, for he was my private tutor when
I was an undergraduate. In him I took leave of my first college,
Trinity, which was so dear to me, and which held on its foundation so
many who had been kind to me both when I was a boy, and all through my
Oxford life. Trinity had never been unkind to me. There used to be
much snapdragon growing on the walls opposite my freshman's rooms
there; and I had for years taken it as the emblem of my own perpetual
residence, even unto death, in my University.

On the morning of the 23d I left the Observatory. I have never seen
Oxford since, excepting its spires as they are seen from the railway.

III

OF ATHENS AS A TRUE UNIVERSITY[7]

If we would know what a university is, considered in its most
elementary idea, we must betake ourselves to the first and most
beautiful home of European civilization, to the bright and beautiful
Athens,--Athens, whose schools drew to