repugnance, even abhorrence, to
public meetings in the later days at Cambridge. I can now recall that
he would accompany people to the door, but never be induced to enter.
A passage which I will quote from one of his letters illustrates
this.

"The presence of a large number of people has a strange, repulsive
physical effect on me. I feel crushed and overwhelmed, not stimulated
and vivified, as is so often described. I can't listen to a concert
comfortably if there is a great throng, unless the music is so good
as to wrap one altogether away. There is undoubtedly a force abroad
among large masses of people, the force which forms the basis of the
principle of public prayer, and I am conscious of it too, only it
distresses me; moreover, the worst and most afflicting nightmare I
have is the sensation of standing sightless and motionless, but with
all the other senses alert and apprehensive, in the presence of a
vast and hostile crowd."

3. He never showed the least sign of being influenced in the
direction of spiritual or even religious life by this crisis. He
certainly spoke very little at all for some time to any one on any
subject; he was distrait and absent-minded in society--for the
alteration was much observed from its suddenness--but when he
gradually began to converse as usual, he did not, as is so often the
case in similar circumstances, do what is called "bearing witness to
the truth." His attitude toward all enthusiastic forms of religion
had been one, in old days, of good-natured, even amused tolerance. He
was now not so good-natured in his criticisms, and less sparing of
them, though his religious-mindedness, his seriousness, was
undoubtedly increased by the experience, whatever it was.

On the whole, then, I should say that the coincidence of the revival
is merely fortuitous. It remains to seek what the cause was.

We must look for it, in a character so dignified as Arthur's, in some
worthy cause, some emotional failure, some moral wound. I believe the
following to be the clew; I can not develop it without treading some
rather delicate ground.

He had formed, in his last year at school, a very devoted friendship
with a younger boy; such friendships like the [Greek: eispnelas] and the
[Greek: aitas] of Sparta, when they are truly chivalrous and absolutely
pure, are above all other loves, noble, refining, true; passion at white
heat without taint, confidence of so intimate a kind as can not even
exist b