Not unnaturally I felt no little trepidation when on presenting myself for the _vivâ voce_ examination for the Slade Exhibition, I saw the dreaded Dean in the Chair. To my relief the Iliad was the book chosen, and I was put on to construe. Then came a few questions on Homeric matters, in which Jelf, during long months, had primed me well; and as I left the room, great was my joy to hear the terrible Dean growl out, “That young man knows his Homer well.” Never shall I forget the welcome which Jelf gave me when it was announced that I had won. Perhaps not a little both of his pleasure and mine consisted in thinking how annoyed Goodford would be, for Jelf always held that Goodford had been unfair to me. It was something of a _schaden-freude_. So I was matriculated by Dean Gaisford, went to Switzerland with my father for a month, and then back to Caerdeon for a final polish at the hands of Mr. Jelf before Oxford. When I entered Christ Church in the following October (1855) there were at any rate three memorable personages amongst the Dons. Dr. Pusey was a venerable figure—venerable not on account of his age, for he was but fifty-five, and had nearly thirty more years ahead of him, but as the hero of many fights, the victim of fierce persecutions, the man who, had he lived two or three centuries earlier, would have been burnt alive; some of his opponents must have regretted the disabilities imposed by the nineteenth century, but he himself would have faced the stake with all the courage of an inspired martyr. As he shuffled along the great quadrangle, by no means a stately figure, looking older, far older, than his years, there would be few men, whatever their opinions might be as to the religious controversy of which he was the figurehead, who would not take off their caps out of respect for his goodness, his piety, his heroism and his great learning. He was not only profoundly versed in all the subtleties of the old Fathers, but at Göttingen, whither the necessities of theological study had driven him, he plunged with heart and soul into the dark depths of German priestcraft and anti-priestcraft, and into the mysteries of Syriac, Hebrew and Arabic scholarship. To me there was always a magic halo about the learning of the East, and so, although I never had speech of the great Divine, never even had the very real honour of being introduced to him, I looked upon him with no little awe as one removed far above the level of ordinary men. The other canons and professors were no doubt worthy men and learned—perhaps even an honour to their cloth; but the famous professor of Hebrew was Somebody. I felt, as Napoleon said of Goethe, “there is a Man.”