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the subject was not alluded to again in their walk home.

A day or two afterwards they returned to Oxford-Hardy to begin his work as fellow and assistant-tutor of the College, and Tom to see whether he could not make a better hand of his second He beyear than he had of his first. gan with a much better chance of doing so, for he was thoroughly humbled. The discovery that he was not altogether such a hero as he had fancied himself, had dawned upon him very distinctly by the end of his first year, and the events of the long vacation had confirmed the impression, and pretty well taken all the conceit out of him for the time. The impotency of his own will, even when he was bent on doing the right thing, his want of insight and foresight in whatever matter he took in hand, the unruliness of his tempers and passions just at the moments when it behoved him to have them most thoroughly in hand and under control, were a set of disagreeable facts which had been driven well home to him. The results, being even such as we have seen, he did not much repine at, for he felt he had deserved them; and there was a sort of grim satisfaction, dreary as the prospect was, in facing them, and taking his punishment like a

man.

This was what he had felt at the first blush on the Hawk's Lynch ; and, as he thought over matters again by his fire, with his oak sported, on the first evening of term, he was still in the same mind. This was clearly what he had to do now. How to do it was the only question.

At first he was inclined to try to set himself right with the Porters and the Englebourn circle, by writing further explanations and confessions to Katie. But, on trying his hand at a letter, he found that he could not trust himself. The temptation of putting everything in the best point of view for himself was too great; so he gave up the attempt, and merely wrote a few lines to David, to remind him that he was always ready and anxious to do all he could for his friend, Harry Winburn, and to beg that he

on.

happened to him, and how he was getting
He did not allude to what had
lately happened, for he did not know
whether the facts had become known,
and was in no hurry to open the subject
himself.

Having finished his letter, he turned
again to his meditations over the fire,
and, considering that he had some little
right to reward resolution, took off the
safety valve, and allowed the thoughts
to bubble up freely which were always
underlying all others that passed through
his brain, and making constant low, de-
licious, but just now somewhat melan-
choly, music in his head and heart. He
gave himself up to thinking of Mary,
and their walk in the wood, and the
sprained ancle, and all the sayings and
doings of that eventful autumn day.
And then he opened his desk and ex-
amined certain treasures therein con-
cealed, including a withered rosebud, a
sprig of heather, a cut boot-lace, and a
scrap or two of writing. Having gone
through some extravagant forms of wor-
ship, not necessary to be specified, he
Would it ever all come
put them away.
right?

He made his solitary tea, and sat down again to consider the point. But the point would not be considered alone. He began to feel more strongly what he had had several hints of already, that there was a curiously close connexion between his own love story and that of Harry Winburn and Patty-that he in his couldn't separate them, even thoughts. Old Simon's tumble, which had recalled his daughter from Oxford at so critical a moment for him; Mary's visit to Englebourn at this very time; the curious yet natural series of little accidents which had kept him in ignorance of Patty's identity until the final catastrophe-then again, the way in which Harry Winburn and his mother had come across him on the very day of his leaving Barton; the fellowship of a common mourning which had seemed to bind them together so closely, and this last discovery which he could not help fearing must turn Harry into a bitter enemy, when he heard the truth, as he must,

sooner or later,-as all these things passed before him, he gave in to a sort of superstitious feeling that his own fate hung in some way or another upon that of Harry Winburn. If he helped on his suit, he was helping on his own; but whether he helped on his own or not, was, after all, not that which was uppermost in his thoughts. He was much changed in this respect since he last sat in those rooms, just after his first days with her. Since then an angel had met him, and had "touched the chord of self, which, trembling," was passing "in music out of sight."

The thought of Harry and his trials enabled him to indulge in some good honest indignation, for which there was no room in his own case. That the prospects in life of such a man should be in the power, to a great extent, of such people as Squire Wurley and farmer Tester; that, because he happened to be poor, he should be turned out of the cottage where his family had lived for a hundred years, at a week's notice, through the caprice of a drunken gambler; that, because he had stood up for his rights, and had thereby offended the worst farmer in the parish, he should be a marked man, and unable to get workthese things appeared so monstrous to him, and made him so angry, that he was obliged to get up and stamp about the room. And from the particular case he very soon got to generalizations.

Questions which had before now puzzled him gained a new significance every minute, and became real to him. Why a few men should be rich, and all the rest poor; above all, why he should be one of the few? Why the mere possession of property should give a man power over all his neighbours? Why poor men who were ready and willing to work should only be allowed to work as a sort of favour, and should after all get the merest tithe of what their labour produced, and be tossed aside as soon as their work was done, or no longer required? These, and other such problems, rose up before him, crude and sharp, asking to be solved. Feeling himself

to them, that he was getting out of his depth, and that the whole business was in a muddle, he had recourse to his old method when in difficulties, and, putting on his cap, started off to Hardy's rooms to talk the matter over, and see whether he could not get some light on it from that quarter.

He returned in an hour or so, somewhat less troubled in his mind, inasmuch as he had found his friend in pretty much the same state as himself. But one step he had gained. Under his arm he carried certain books from Hardy's scanty library, the perusal of which he hoped, at least, might enable him sooner or later to feel that he had got on to some sort of firm ground. At any rate, Hardy had advised him to read them; so, without more ado, he drew his chair to the table and began to look into them.

This glimpse of the manner in which Tom spent the first evening of his second year at Oxford, will enable intelligent readers to understand why, though he took to reading far more kindly and earnestly than he had ever done before, he made no great advance in the proper studies of the place. Not that he wholly neglected these, for Hardy kept him pretty well up to the collar, and he passed his little-go creditably, and was fairly placed at the college examinations. In some of the books which he had to get up for lectures he was really interested. The politics of Athens, the struggle between the Roman plebs and patricians, Mons Sacer and the Agrarian Laws-these began to have a new meaning to him, but chiefly because they bore more or less on the great Harry Winburn problem; which problem, indeed, for him had now fairly swelled into the condition-of-England problem, and was becoming every day more and more urgent and importunate, shaking many old beliefs, and leading him whither he knew not.

This very matter of leading was a sore trial to him. The further he got on his new road the more he felt the want of guidance the guidance of some man; for that of books he soon found to be

consulted, only deprecated the waste of time; but, on finding it impossible to dissuade him, at last recommended the economic works of that day as the proper well-springs of truth on such matters. To them Tom accordingly went, and read with the docility and faith of youth, bent on learning, and feeling itself in the presence of men who had, or assumed, the right of speaking with authority.

And they spoke to him with authority, and he read on, believing much and hoping more; but somehow they did not really satisfy him, though they silenced him for the time. It was not the fault of the books, most of which laid down clearly enough that what they professed to teach was the science of man's material interests, and the laws of the making and employment of capital. But this escaped him in his eagerness, and he wandered up and down their pages in search of quite another science, and of laws with which they did not meddle. Nevertheless, here and there they seemed to touch upon what he was in search of. He was much fascinated, for instance, by the doctrine of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," and for its sake swallowed for a time, though not without wry faces, the dogmas, that self-interest is the true pivot of all social action, that population has a perpetual tendency to outstrip the means of living. and that to establish a preventive check on population is the duty of all good citizens. And so he lived on for some time in a dreary uncomfortable state, fearing for the future of his country, and with little hope about his own. But, when he came to take stock of his newly-acquired knowledge, to weigh it and measure it, and found it to consist of a sort of hazy conviction that society would be all right and ready for the millennium, when every man could do what he liked, and nobody could interfere with him, and there should be a law against marriage, the result was more than he could stand. He roused himself, and shook himself, and began to think, "Well, these my

and well-meaning men, too. I see all that; but, if their teaching is only to land me here, why it was scarcely worth while going through so much to get so little."

Casting about still for guidance, Grey occurred to him. Grey was in residence as a bachelor, attending divinity lectures, and preparing for ordination. He was still working hard at the night-school, and Tom had been there once or twice to help him when the curate was away. In short, he was in very good books with Grey, who had got the better of his shyness with him. He saw that Tom was changed and sobered, and in his heart hoped some day to wean him from the pursuits of the body, to which he was still fearfully addicted, and to bring him into the fold. This hope was not altogether unfounded; for, notwithstanding the strong bias against them which Tom had brought with him from school, he was now at times much attracted by many of the high church doctrines, and the men who professed them. Such men as Grey he saw did really believe something, and were in earnest about carrying their beliefs into action. The party might and did comprise many others of the weakest sort, who believed and were in earnest about nothing, but who liked to be peculiar. Nevertheless, while he saw it laying hold of many of the best men of his time, it is not be wondered at that he was drawn towards it Some help might lie in these men if he could only get at it!

So he propounded his doubts and studies, and their results, to Grey. But it was a failure. Grey felt no difficulty, or very little, in the whole matter; but Tom found that it was because he believed the world to belong to the devil. "Laissez faire," "buying cheap and selling dear," Grey held might be good enough laws for the world-very probably were. The laws of the Church were "self-sacrifice," and "bearing one another's burthens;" her children should come out from the regions where the other's laws were acknowledged.

and thought he was getting on the right track; but very soon he found that Grey's specific was not of the least use to him! It was no good to tell him of the rules of a society to which he felt that he neither belonged, nor wished to belong, for clearly it could not be the Church of England. He was an outsider! Grey would probably admit it to be so, if he asked him! He had no longing to be anything else, if the Church meant an exclusive body, which took no care of any but its own people, and had nothing to say to the great world in which he and most people had to live, and buying and selling, and hiring and working, had to go on. The close corporation might have very good laws, but they were nothing to him. What he wanted to know about was the law which this great world-the devil's world, as Grey called it was ruled by, or rather ought to be ruled by. Perhaps, after all, Bentham and the others, whose books he had been reading, might be right! At any rate, it was clear that they had in their thoughts the same world that he had-the world which included himself and Harry Winburn, and all labourers, and squires, and farmers. So he turned to them again, not hopefully, but

more inclined to listen to them than he had been before he had spoken to Grey.

Hardy was so fully occupied with college lectures and private pupils, that Tom had scruples about taking up much of his spare time in the evenings. Nevertheless, as Grey had broken down, and there was nobody else on whose judgment he could rely who would listen to him, whenever he had a chance he would propound some of his puzzles to his old friend. In some respects he got little help, for Hardy was almost as much at sea as he himself on such subjects as "value," and "wages," and the "laws of supply and demand." But there was an indomitable belief in him that all men's intercourse with one another, and not merely that of Churchmen, must be founded on the principle of "doing as they would be done by," and not on" buying cheap and selling dear,"

reconciled with one another, or mean the same thing, twist them how you would. This faith of his friend's comforted Tom greatly, and he was never tired of bringing it out; but at times he had his doubts whether Grey might not be right-whether, after all, that and the like maxims and principles were meant to be the laws of the kingdoms of this world. He wanted some corroborative evidence on the subject from an impartial and competent witness, and at last hit upon what he wanted. For, one evening, on entering Hardy's rooms, he found him on the last pages of a book, which he shut with an air of triumph on recognising his visitor. Taking it up, he thrust it into Tom's hands, and slapping him on the shoulder, said, "There, my boy, that's what we want, or pretty near it at any rate. Now, don't say a word, but go back to your rooms, and swallow it whole and digest it, and then come back and tell me what you think of it."

"But I want to talk to you."

"I can't talk; I have spent the better part of two days over that book, and have no end of papers to look over. There; get back to your rooms, and do what I tell you, or sit down here and hold your tongue."

So Tom sat down and held his tongue, and was soon deep in Carlyle's Past and Present. How he did revel in it-in the humour, the power, the pathos, but above all in the root and branch denunciations of many of the doctrines in which he had been so lately voluntarily and wearily chaining himself! The chains went snapping off one after another, and in his exultation he kept spouting out passage after passage in a song of triumph, "Enlightened egoism

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He had scarcely ever in his life been so moved by a book before. He laughed over it, and cried over it, and began half a dozen letters to the author to thank him, which he fortunately tore up. He almost forgot Mary for several hours during his first enthusiasm. He had no notion how he had been mastered and oppressed before. He felt as the crew of a small fishing-smack, who are being towed away by an enemy's cruiser, might feel on seeing a frigate with the Union Jack flying, bearing down and opening fire on their captor; or as a small boy at school, who is being fagged against rules by the right of the strongest, feels when he sees his big brother coming round the corner. The help which he had found was just what he wanted. There was no narrowing of the ground here, no appeal to men as members of any exclusive body whatever to separate themselves and come out of the devil's world; but to men as men, to every man as a man, to the weakest and meanest as well as to the strongest and most noble, telling them that the world is God's world, that every one of them has a work in it, and bidding them find their work and set about it.

The strong tinge of sadness which ran through the whole book, and its unsparing denunciations of the established order of things, suited his own unsettled and restless frame of mind. So he gave himself up to his new bondage, and rejoiced in it as though he had found at last what he was seeking for; and, by the time that long vacation came round again, to which we are compelled to hurry him, he was filled full of a set of contradictory notions and beliefs which were destined to astonish and perplex the mind of that worthy J. P. for the county of Berks, Brown the elder, whatever other effect they might have on society at large.

Readers must not suppose, however, that our hero had given up his old pursuits; on the contrary, he continued to boat, and cricket, and spar with as much vigour as ever. His perplexities only made him a little more silent at his pas

already seen him thus employed, and know the ways of the animal in such matters, it is needless to repeat. What we want to do is to follow him into new fields of thought and action, and mark, if it may be, how he develops, and gets himself educated in one way and another; and this plunge into the great sea of social, political, and economical questions is the noticeable fact (so far as any is noticeable) of his second year's residence.

During the year he had only very meagre accounts of matters at Englebourn. Katie, indeed, had come round sufficiently to write to him; but she scarcely alluded to her cousin. He only knew that Mary had come out in London, and was much admired, and that the Porters had not taken Barton again, but were going abroad for the autumn and winter. The accounts of Harry were bad; he was still living at Daddy Collins's, nobody knew how, and working gang-work occasionally with the outlaws of the heath.

The only fact of importance in the neighbourhood had been the death of Squire Wurley, which happened suddenly in the spring. A distant cousin had succeeded him, a young man of Tom's own age.

He was also in residence at Oxford, and Tom knew him. They were not very congenial; so he was much astonished when young Wurley, on his return to College after his relative's funeral, rather sought him out, and seemed to wish to know more of him. The end of it was an invitation to Tom to come to the Grange, and spend a week or so at the beginning of the long vacation. There was to be a party of Oxford men, and nobody else there; and they meant to enjoy themselves thoroughly, Wurley said.

Tom felt much embarrassed how to act, and, after some hesitation, told his inviter of his last visit to the mansion in question, thinking that a knowledge of the circumstances might change his mind. But he found that young Wurley knew the facts already; and in fact he couldn't help suspecting that his

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