that his temper, which was through life reserved, was then very shy. His appearance, too, was odd; ‘a thin little figure, with a large head, disputing and arguing with the greatest ability.’ Of course he was a joke among undergraduates; he consulted his tutor as to studying Arabic, and was seen buying _La Bibliothèque Orientale d’Herbelot_, and immediately a legend was diffused that he had turned Mahomedan. The random cast was not so far from the mark: cut off by peculiarities from the society of young people; deprived of regular tuition and systematic employment; tumbling about among crude masses of heterogeneous knowledge; alone with the heated brain of youth,—he did what an experienced man would expect—he framed a theory of all things. No doubt it seemed to him the most natural thing in the world. Was he to be the butt of ungenial wine-parties, or spend his lonely hours on shreds of languages? Was he not to know the _truth_? There were the old problems, the everlasting difficulties, the _mœnia mundi_, the Hercules’ pillars of the human imagination—‘fate, free-will, fore-knowledge absolute.’ Surely these should come first; when we had learned the great landmarks, understood the guiding-stars, we might amuse ourselves with small points, and make a plaything of curious information. What particular theory the mind frames when in this state is a good deal matter of special accident. The _data_ for considering these difficulties are not within its reach. Whether man be or be not born to solve the ‘mystery of the knowable,’ he certainly is not born to solve it at seventeen, with the first hot rush of the untrained mind. The selection of Gibbon was remarkable: he became a Roman Catholic. It seems now so natural that an Oxford man should take this step, that one can hardly understand the astonishment it created. Lord Sheffield tells us that the Privy Council interfered; and with good administrative judgment examined a London bookseller—some Mr. Lewis—who had no concern in it. In the manor-house of Buriton it would have probably created less sensation if ‘dear Edward’ had announced his intention of becoming a monkey. The English have ever believed that the Papist is a kind of _creature_; and every sound mind would prefer a beloved child to produce a tail, a hide of hair, and a taste for nuts, in comparison with transubstantiation, wax-candles, and a belief in the glories of Mary.