Those early Oxford days were bright days for me, and now, when those young and old faces, whether undergraduates or archbishops, rise up again before me, I being almost the only one left of that happy company, I ask again, “Did they also belong to a mere dreamland, they who gave life to my life, and made England my real home?” When I first saw them at Oxford, I was really an undergraduate, though I had taken my Doctor’s degree at Leipzig. I lived, in fact, my happy university life over again, and it would be difficult to say which academical years I enjoyed more, those at Leipzig and Berlin, or those at Oxford. There were intermediate years in Paris, but during my stay there I saw but little of students and student life. I was too much oppressed with cares and anxieties about my present and future to think much of society and enjoyment. At Oxford, these cares had become far less, and I could by hard work earn as much money as I wanted, and cared to spend. In Paris, I was already something of a scholar and writer; at Oxford I became once more the undergraduate. This young society into which I was received was certainly most attractive, though that it contained the germs of future greatness never struck me at the time. What struck me was the general tone of the conversation. Of course, as Lord Palmerston said of himself when he was no longer very young, “boys will be boys,” but there never was anything rude or vulgar in their conversation, and I hardly ever heard an offensive remark among them. Most of my friends came from Balliol, and were serious-minded men, many of them occupied and troubled by religious, philosophical, and social problems.