ouse even a languid interest. At no time probably
since the beginning of the century could an ordinary observer have
detected less sign of coming disturbance than at that of which I am
writing.

I need hardly say that the calm was only on the surface. Older men, who
knew more than undergraduates were likely to do, must have seen that the
wave of scepticism which had already broken over Germany was setting
towards our own shores, nor was it long, indeed, before it reached them.
Ernest had hardly been ordained before three works in quick succession
arrested the attention even of those who paid least heed to theological
controversy. I mean "Essays and Reviews," Charles Darwin's "Origin of
Species," and Bishop Colenso's "Criticisms on the Pentateuch."

This, however, is a digression; I must revert to the one phase of
spiritual activity which had any life in it during the time Ernest was at
Cambridge, that is to say, to the remains of the Evangelical awakening of
more than a generation earlier, which was connected with the name of
Simeon.

There were still a good many Simeonites, or as they were more briefly
called "Sims," in Ernest's time. Every college contained some of them,
but their headquarters were at Caius, whither they were attracted by Mr
Clayton who was at that time senior tutor, and among the sizars of St
John's.

Behind the then chapel of this last-named college, there was a
"labyrinth" (this was the name it bore) of dingy, tumble-down rooms,
tenanted exclusively by the poorest undergraduates, who were dependent
upon sizarships and scholarships for the means of taking their degrees.
To many, even at St John's, the existence and whereabouts of the
labyrinth in which the sizars chiefly lived was unknown; some men in
Ernest's time, who had rooms in the first court, had never found their
way through the sinuous passage which led to it.

In the labyrinth there dwelt men of all ages, from mere lads to
grey-haired old men who had entered late in life. They were rarely seen
except in hall or chapel or at lecture, where their manners of feeding,
praying and studying, were considered alike objectionable; no one knew
whence they came, whither they went, nor what they did, for they never
showed at cricket or the boats; they were a gloomy, seedy-looking
_conferie_, who had as little to glory in in clothes and manners as in
the flesh itself.

Ernest and his friends used to consider themselves marvels of economy fo