ropping in to King's for the
anthem, went back to his rooms for tea, the one time at which he
liked to see his friends, read or talked till hall, and finally
settled down to his books again at ten, reading till one or two in
the morning.

He read very desultorily and widely. Thus he would read books on
Arctic voyages for ten days and talk of nothing else, then read
novels till he sickened for facts and fact till he sickened for
fiction; biographies, elementary science, poetry, general philosophy,
particularly delighting in any ideal theories of life and discipline
in state or association, but with a unique devotion to "Hamlet"
and "As You Like It," the "Pilgrim's Progress," and Emerson's
"Representative Men." He rarely read the Bible, he told me, and then
only in great masses at a sitting; and the one thing that he disliked
with an utter hatred was theology of a settled and orthodox type,
though next to the four books I have mentioned, "The Christian Year"
and "Ecce Homo" were his constant companions.

He did not care for history; he used to lament it. "I have but a
languid interest in facts, qua facts," he said; "and I try to arrive
at history through biography. I like to disentangle the separate
strands, one at a time; the fabric is too complex for me."

He had the greatest delight in topography. "That is why," he used to
say, "I delight in a flat country. The idea of _space_ is what I want.
I like to see miles at a glance. I like to see clouds league-long
rolling up in great masses from the horizon--cloud perspective. I
rejoice in seeing the fields, hedgerow after hedgerow, farm after
farm, push into the blue distance. It makes me feel the unity and the
diversity of life; a city bewilders and confuses me, but a great
tract of placid country gives me a broad glow of satisfaction."

He went for a walking tour in the fens, and returned enchanted. "By
Ely," he said, "the line crosses a gigantic fen--Whittlesea mere in
old days--and on a clear day you can see at least fifteen miles
either way. As we crossed it a great skein of starlings rose out of
a little holt, and streamed north; the herons or quiet cattle stood
along the huge dykes. You could see the scattered figures of old
labourers in the fields, and then for miles and miles the squat
towers, at which you were making, staring over the flat, giving you
a thrill every time you sighted them, and right away west the low
hills that must have been the sandy downs th