FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26  
27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   >>   >|  
ntry round Stonehouse--a country of barish slopes and richly wooded valleys--is perhaps hardly so beautiful as that which he had left and whose memory he never ceased to cherish. But it has a charm all its own, and the child of Dartmoor had no great reason to lament his removal to the grey uplands and "golden valleys" of the Cotswolds. His next change must have seemed one greatly for the worse. In 1884 he was sent to the school for the sons of Congregational ministers at Caterham; and the Cotswolds, with their wide outlook over the Severn estuary to May Hill and the wooded heights beyond, were exchanged for the bald sweep and the white chalk-pits of the North Downs. These too have their unique beauty; but I never remember to have heard Moorman say anything which showed that he felt it as those who have known such scenery from boyhood might have expected him to do. After some five years at Caterham, he began his academical studies at University College, London; but, on the strength of a scholarship, soon removed to University College, Aberystwyth (1890), where the scenery--sea, heron-haunted estuaries, wooded down to the very shore, and hills here and there rising almost into mountains--offered surroundings far more congenial to him than the streets and squares of Bloomsbury. In these new surroundings, he seems to have been exceptionally happy, throwing himself into all the interests of the place, athletic as well as intellectual, and endearing himself both to his teachers and his fellow-students. His friendship with Professor Herford, then Professor of English at Aberystwyth, was one of the chief pleasures of his student days as well as of his after life. Following his natural bent, he decided to study for Honours in English Language and Literature, and at the end of his course (1893) was placed in the Second Class by the examiners for the University of London, to which the Aberystwyth College was at that time affiliated. Those who believe in the virtue of infant prodigies--and, in the country which invented Triposes and Class Lists, it is hard to fix any limit to their number--will be distressed to learn that, in the opinion of those best qualified to judge of such matters, he was not at that time reckoned to be of "exceptionally scholarly calibre." Perhaps this was an omen all the better for his future prospects as a scholar. It is a wholesome practice that, when the cares of examinations are once safely behi
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26  
27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

University

 

Aberystwyth

 

College

 

wooded

 

Cotswolds

 
country
 

Professor

 

valleys

 

London

 

Caterham


English
 

scenery

 

surroundings

 

exceptionally

 

student

 

pleasures

 

Honours

 
decided
 

Herford

 

Following


natural

 

teachers

 

squares

 

streets

 

Bloomsbury

 

congenial

 
mountains
 
offered
 

endearing

 
fellow

students

 

intellectual

 

athletic

 
throwing
 

interests

 

friendship

 

Perhaps

 

calibre

 
scholarly
 

qualified


matters

 

reckoned

 

future

 

prospects

 

examinations

 

safely

 
scholar
 
wholesome
 

practice

 

opinion