reach
his heart through his mind. That deep intellect, so given to analyze,
meditate, generalize, from childhood upward, according to the relative
capacity of age, was ever busy with the great problems of life. It has
been seen that he began to worry even his nurses with childish
questions, and afterward much more to embarrass his tutors, masters
etc., and especially the excellent Dr. Glenny at Dulwich. A natural
tendency fortified by early religious education evidently drew his heart
to God; but, on the other hand, a logical mind, fond of investigating
every thing, made him experience the necessity of examining his grounds
of belief. The answers, all ready prepared, made to him on great
questions could not satisfy him; he required to discuss their basis.
Already the increasing play of his faculties had been revealed in that
beautiful Prayer to the Divinity which constitutes his profession of
faith and worship, "every line of which," says Moore, "is instinct with
fervent sadness, as of a heart that grieves at loss of its illusions."

On arriving this year at Cambridge, he found, amid a circle of
intellectual companions which Moore calls "a brilliant pleiad," a young
man of genius, an extraordinary thinker, a mind that had, perhaps, some
affinity to his own, but which, devoid of his sensibility and logic,
surpassed him in hardihood; a bold spirit, striving to scrutinize the
inscrutable, and, not content with analysis, desirous to arrive at
_conclusions_. Through the natural influence of example, and more
especially the irresistible fascination exercised by a great
intelligence, uniting also the spirit of fun, so amusing to Lord Byron
because so like his own; from all these causes, Matthews exercised an
immense influence over him. This young man loved to plunge his head into
depths from whence he emerged all dizzy. Lord Byron was guided by too
reasonable a mind to arrive at such results. He refused to follow where
deformity and evil were to ensue, and persisted still in looking upward.
Still, however, he allowed his eyes to wander over the magic glass,
where danced a few pretended certainties conjoined with a host of
doubts. The first he rejected, as too antipathetic to his soul, but
perhaps he did not sufficiently repel all the doubts. And, being no
longer alarmed at sounding such depths, he imbibed seeds of doctrine
capable of producing incredulity or, at least, skepticism. Happily these
seeds required a dry soil to fru