being fine, he left his
portmanteau to follow him by the omnibus, and put himself upon the road.
If it required some courage to undertake by himself a long journey on an
all-momentous errand, it did not lessen the difficulty that that journey
took in its way a place and a person so dear to him as Oxford and
Carlton.

He had passed through Bagley Wood, and the spires and towers of the
University came on his view, hallowed by how many tender associations,
lost to him for two whole years, suddenly recovered--recovered to be
lost for ever! There lay old Oxford before him, with its hills as gentle
and its meadows as green as ever. At the first view of that beloved
place he stood still with folded arms, unable to proceed. Each college,
each church--he counted them by their pinnacles and turrets. The silver
Isis, the grey willows, the far-stretching plains, the dark groves, the
distant range of Shotover, the pleasant village where he had lived with
Carlton and Sheffield--wood, water, stone, all so calm, so bright, they
might have been his, but his they were not. Whatever he was to gain by
becoming a Catholic, this he had lost; whatever he was to gain higher
and better, at least this and such as this he never could have again. He
could not have another Oxford, he could not have the friends of his
boyhood and youth in the choice of his manhood. He mounted the
well-known gate on the left, and proceeded down into the plain. There
was no one to greet him, to sympathize with him; there was no one to
believe he needed sympathy; no one to believe he had given up anything;
no one to take interest in him, to feel tender towards him, to defend
him. He had suffered much, but there was no one to believe that he had
suffered. He would be thought to be inflicting merely, not undergoing,
suffering. He might indeed say that he had suffered; but he would be
rudely told that every one follows his own will, and that if he had
given up Oxford, it was for a whim which he liked better than it. But
rather, there was no one to know him; he had been virtually three years
away; three years is a generation; Oxford had been his place once, but
his place knew him no more. He recollected with what awe and transport
he had at first come to the University, as to some sacred shrine; and
how from time to time hopes had come over him that some day or other he
should have gained a title to residence on one of its ancient
foundations. One night in particular came