My sluggish brain waked up at last and I was able to study with
application. In the public examinations I did pretty well, and
may even have been thought something of a credit to the school.
Yet I formed no close associations, and I even contrived to
avoid, as I had afterwards occasion to regret, such lessons as
were distasteful to me, and therefore particularly valuable. But
I read with unchecked voracity, and in several curious
directions. Shakespeare now passed into my possession entire, in
the shape of a reprint more hideous and more offensive to the
eyesight than would in these days appear conceivable. I made
acquaintance with Keats, who entirely captivated me; with
Shelley, whose 'Queen Mab' at first repelled me from the
threshold of his edifice; and with Wordsworth, for the exercise
of whose magic I was still far too young. My Father presented me
with the entire bulk of Southey's stony verse, which I found it
impossible to penetrate, but my stepmother lent me _The Golden
Treasury_, in which almost everything seemed exquisite.

Upon this extension of my intellectual powers, however, there did
not follow any spirit of doubt or hostility to the faith. On the
contrary, at first there came a considerable quickening of
fervour. My prayers became less frigid and mechanical; I no
longer avoided as far as possible the contemplation of religious
ideas; I began to search the Scriptures for myself with interest
and sympathy, if scarcely with ardour. I began to perceive,
without animosity, the strange narrowness of my Father's system,
which seemed to take into consideration only a selected circle of
persons, a group of disciples peculiarly illuminated, and to have
no message whatever for the wider Christian community.

On this subject I had some instructive conversations with my
Father, whom I found not reluctant to have his convictions pushed
to their logical extremity. He did not wish to judge, he
protested; but he could not admit that a single Unitarian (or
'Socinian', as he preferred to say) could possibly be redeemed;
and he had no hope of eternal salvation for the inhabitants of
Catholic countries. I recollect his speaking of Austria. He
questioned whether a single Austrian subject, except, as he said,
here and there a pious and extremely ignorant individual, who had
not comprehended the errors of the Papacy, but had humbly studied
his Bible, could hope to find eternal life. He thought that the
ordinary Chinaman or