In this condition the best and bravest of my own contemporaries determined to have done with insincerity, to find ground under their feet, to let the uncertain remain uncertain, but to learn how much and what we could honestly regard as true and believe that and live by it. Tennyson became the voice of this feeling in poetry, Carlyle in what was called prose, though prose it was not, but something by itself with a form and melody of its own. Tennyson's Poems, the group of Poems which closed with "In Memoriam," became to many of us what the "Christian Year" was to orthodox Churchmen. We read them, and they became part of our minds, the expression in exquisite language of the feelings which were working in ourselves. Carlyle stood beside him as a prophet and teacher; and to the young, the generous, to every one who took life seriously, who wished to make an honourable use of it and could not be content with sitting down and making money, his words were like the morning _reveille_. Others may come at last to the sad conclusion that nothing can be known about the world, that the external powers, whatever they may be, are indifferent to human action or human welfare. To such an opinion some men, and those not the worst, may be driven after weary observation of life. But the young will never believe it; or if they do they have been young only in name. If the first paragraphs aptly "place" Tennyson and Carlyle, the last, though not intentionally, exactly suits their friend, the translator of the _Rubáiyát_. FitzGerald remained, as his friend the Master of Trinity College (W. H. Thompson) said, in "Doubting Castle." Tennyson was the most hopeful, as well as the most balanced and sane, and therefore the most helpful of the three.