There is, of course, a definite explanation to be given of one effect produced by the _Lyrical Ballads_. God is nowhere formally deposed, and Wordsworth would have been the last man to say that he had lost his faith in the God of his fathers. But his real God is not the God of the Church, but the God of the hills, the abstraction Nature, and to this my reverence was transferred. Instead of an object of worship which was altogether artificial, remote, never coming into genuine contact with me, I had now one which I thought to be real, one in which literally I could live and move and have my being, an actual fact present before my eyes. God was brought from that heaven of the books, and dwelt on the downs in the far-away distances, and in every cloud-shadow which wandered across the valley. Wordsworth unconsciously did for me what every religious reformer has done—he re-created my Supreme Divinity; substituting a new and living spirit for the old deity, once alive, but gradually hardened into an idol. What days were those of the next few years before increasing age had presented preciser problems and demanded preciser answers; before all joy was darkened by the shadow of on-coming death, and when life seemed infinite! Those were the days when through the whole long summer’s morning I wanted no companion but myself, provided only I was in the country, and when books were read with tears in the eyes. Those were the days when mere life, apart from anything which it brings, was exquisite. In my own college I found no sympathy, but we were in the habit of meeting occasionally the students from other colleges, and amongst them I met with one or two, especially one who had undergone experiences similar to my own. The friendships formed with these young men have lasted till now, and have been the most permanent of all the relationships of my existence. I wish not to judge others, but the persons who to me have proved themselves most attractive, have been those who have passed through such a process as that through which I myself passed; those who have had in some form or other an enthusiastic stage in their history, when the story of Genesis and of the Gospels has been rewritten, when God has visibly walked in the garden, and the Son of God has drawn men away from their daily occupations into the divinest of dreams.