bility, one of enforced work; and the choice of a profession being placed before him, he chose, as the one most consonant with his aspirations, a career of learning and intellectual toil. The school where he received his instruction, which, when he entered it, was the best and most famous in Dublin, was now fast falling into decrepitude. He felt that if he was to succeed in his studies, it would be necessary to get away from old surroundings, and into a school under fresher and more vigorous management. Such an one presented itself much nearer home, and its proximity was likewise regarded as a recommendation. And so he turned his back on the old associates, many of whom, strange to say, he did not meet again for several years; and entered the new school with satisfaction. There he was soon put upon surer paths, and led forward with more sympathetic care; and if these pages should ever happen to fall into the hands of his old principal, the Rev. R**** N****, now in a very distant land, let him be assured that his goodnatured helpfulness was to him always in after-life a happy recollection, as it is now to me.

In this school, being in its highest class, he enjoyed the most perfect freedom of action, and received plenty of encouragement in his aims. He set himself to work with a characteristic indomitable determination, and with a full use of his enviable faculty of concentrativeness, which made it possible

for him for the time being to exclude even the most fascinating matters of thought from his mind, and thus to economize his moments, as if by a natural law, with rare advantage.

Thus he opened a fresh chapter of his life-a varied one, to be arrested, God knows, darkly and tragically enough.

The more he advanced in this rapid course of study, the more he felt that, for the purposes of mere collegiate success, his previous education had been deplorably bad. With a fervent love of the Greek and Latin poets, he had read through them unsystematically, and had gone much farther than had been required of him, looking for the pleasure they yielded his imagination, not cultivating accuracy. More than this, he had despised-and he continued to despise to the last day of his lifethe grubbing student who confines himself merely to the tasks set down for him, dreams of nothing higher than his pitiable little prizes, and never cares to think or to explore ahead. He had therefore to pick up all his lost threads, and he had to be quick about it. It will soon appear to what a career of intellectual endeavour he committed himself.

I have followed the course of his life to the conclusion of one of its brightest and happiest periods. As yet he had suffered little. His spirit was strong and eager for adventure. His bodily health was perfect; no lad of his age could have been more

vigorous, more lively, harder to fatigue or exhaust. His activity of mind and of body was incessant ; books were read; poems were written; mountains were scaled; joyous walks of exploration were taken day after day, enlivened by choruses, sometimes of his own creation-his several companions being schooled by him in their respective parts, which he would strike out impromptu, guided by an ear intolerant of discord. Behind his father's house the green fields stretched for miles and miles into the apparently interminable Midland Plain; and one of his delights was, to go out with a leaping-pole, and pass away far, through field after field, startling the shy blue kingfisher and the water-hen in their haunts, as he went bounding across the streams and ditches and the "green mantle of the standing pool." And another of his fancies was, to start from the mountains, wherever on their sides or summits he might happen to be, and make his way in a straight line home, crossing fences, garden-walls, rivulets, passing through demesnes, farmyards, woods, turning seldom aside for any obstacle, till his destination was reached. So he lived; and each day's activity seemed to be followed only by an accession of intenser vitality and a more rapturous enjoyment of life.

It was now that the first beautiful passion of boyhood began to find utterance in his verse; and if a boy's dream of love had ever power to exalt the

nature in which it awoke, this, his young vision, exalted him. I was a very little boy when we walked out one lovely summer-day, he and I, far from our home to one of the most beautiful of the Wicklow gorges-then more beautiful than it is now, for it was unspoilt by any touch of desecrating hands, and nature had her own wild way with it; and while I rested by a brook in a neighbouring valley, he wandered alone in that delicious glen; and I well remember the light on his face and the rapture in his eyes when he returned to me, and told me that he had there seen unexpectedly, among the old oaks and hazels, such a face as he had longed to see. The world seemed for him new-clad in richer summer; and the music of his voice and the glory on his face made the world appear to me that moment a paradise indeed.

I look back upon that day as the one of most unbroken joy I ever knew in his life; and it does appear as if a shadow began to darken about him soon afterwards; and although there were many and many happy days to follow, and with them successes, and fine experiences, and progress in knowledge, and bright achievements, still it seems to me as if the same lightness of heart and the same perfect freedom from care never again returned.

CHAPTER III. 1858-1859, ÆT. 17-18.

A Romantic Acquaintanceship.—A Gloomy Walk and Eventful Discussion.-Early Scepticism.-Mental Turmoil.—A Triple Alliance.-Eager Search for Light, and Boyish Extravagances.-"The Valley of the Shadow of Death."Downward Strides.-Revolt against a Religion of Blood.— Bugbear of the Vindictive Deity.-The Vindictive Deity defied.-Youthful Love-Dream shattered.-Mental Agonies.—Loyalty to Virtue.-A Theological Challenge.— "The Servant of the Lord Jesus Christ."- Fantastic Religionists. An Eloquent Evangelist: unstable Arguments in Support of Christianity.-A deeper Darkness.— Notion of a Personal God abandoned. - Undeveloped Materialism.-The Seaside.-Continued Intellectual Activity." The Doctor," T. C. D.—Manicheistic Approximations. Cynical Indifference. -The Verge of the Bottomless Pit.-Lament for the Lost Love.-First Visit to Derbyshire. Wales described.-Brightening Horizons.-Enters Trinity College, Dublin.-University Successes.-Letter I.: the Scottish Borderers.

ROM the time when first his tastes began to

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develop in the direction of poetry and intellectual endeavour, Armstrong had never found it easy to meet with congenial associates, and outside the circle of his household he had now but one really intimate companion. And yet nobody was