While at Trinity college (1828-31) he formed friendships which lasted till death ended them one by one. It was indeed a company of choice spirits with whom Tennyson had the good fortune to be associated. Among them were Thackeray, Helps, Garden, Sterling, Thompson, Kinglake, Maurice, Kemble, Milnes, Trench, Alford, Brookfield, Merivale, Spedding and others. Besides these, he numbered among the friends of his early manhood Fitzgerald, Hare, Hunt, Carlyle, Gladstone, Rogers, Landor, Forster, the Lushingtons and other famous scholars and men of letters. In the companionship of such men, he found the stimulus necessary for the development of his poetical faculty. They all regarded him with feelings of warmest admiration.[2] The young poet had at least a few appreciative readers during the ten or twelve years of obscurity when the public cared little for his writings. He was encouraged by their words of commendation to pursue the bard's divine calling, to which he was led by an overmastering instinct. He could afford to wait and smile at his slashing reviewers. Meanwhile he profited by the suggestions of his critics. In this respect he presents a striking contrast to Browning. He mercilessly subjected his productions to the most painstaking revision.[3] He attempted various styles, and experimented with all sorts of metres. Thus he served his laborious apprenticeship and acquired a mastery of his art. His eminent success has confirmed the expectations of his youthful admirers. During his stay at Cambridge, Tennyson met Arthur Henry Hallam, a son of the historian. Hallam, who was a young man of extraordinary promise, became the dearest of his friends--more to him than brother. Their intimate fellowship was strengthened by Arthur's love for the poet's sister. It was his strongest earthly attachment. In 1830, the two friends traveled through France together, and stopped a while in the Pyrenees. On revisiting these mountains long afterward, the Laureate, overcome by reminiscences of other days, wrote the affecting lines entitled "In the Valley of Cauteretz": All along the valley, stream that flashest white, Deepening thy voice with the deepening of the night, All along the valley, where thy waters flow, I walk'd with one I loved two and thirty years ago. For all along the valley, while I walk'd to-day, The two and thirty years were a mist that rolls away; For all along the valley, down thy rocky bed, Thy living voice to me was as the voice of the dead, And all along the valley, by rock and cave and tree, The voice of the dead was a living voice to me.