I therefore think, before I go any further, it will be as well to
give a short account of his religious opinions at this time, as they
were very much bound up with his life. He told me not unfrequently
that religion had been nothing whatever to him at school, and he came
up to the University impressionable, ardent, like a clean paper ready
for any writing.

It is well known that at the Universities there is a good deal of
proselytizing; that it is customary for men of marked religious views
and high position to have a large _clientele_ of younger men
whom they influence and mould; schools of the prophets.

Arthur was not drawn into any one of these completely, though I fancy
that he was to a certain extent influenced by the teaching of one of
these men. The living original of these words will pardon me if I
here insert the words of my friend relating to him; many Cambridge
men have been and are everlastingly grateful for his simple noble
influence and example.

"Why are there certain people in this world, who whenever they enter
a room have a strange power of galvanizing everybody there into
connection with themselves? what mysterious currents do they set in
motion to and from them, so that those who do not talk to them or at
them, begin to talk with reference to them, hedged about as they are
with an atmosphere of desire and command?

"There is one of these at Cambridge now, a man for whom I not only
have the profoundest respect, but whose personal presence exercises
on me just the fascination I describe; and influential as he is, it
is influence more utterly unconscious of its own power than any I
have seen--a rare quality. He finds all societies into which he
enters, stung by his words and looks, serious, sweet, interested in,
if not torn by moral and social problems of the deepest import; yet
he always fancies that it is they, not he, that are thus potent. He
is not aware that it is he who is saintly; he thinks it is they that
are good; and all this, not for want of telling him, for he must be
weary of genuine praise and thanks."

To write thus of any one must imply a deep attraction. I do not
think, however, that the admiration ever extended itself to imitation
in matters theoretical or religious. Arthur was not one of those
indiscriminate admirers, blinded by a single radiant quality to
accept the whole body as full of light.

Very slowly his convictions crystallized; he had a period of very
earnest thou