There was no sun to light up the misty reaches of the river; the trees in the Broad Walk were almost bare; the Virginian creeper no longer shone in patches of delicate crimson on the college walls; the gardens were damp and forsaken.

But to Mrs.Elsmere and Robert the place needed neither sun nor summer 'for beauty's heightening.' On both of them it laid its old irresistible spell; the sentiment haunting its quadrangles, its libraries, and its dim melodious chapels, stole into the lad's heart and alternately soothed and stimulated that keen individual consciousness which naturally accompanies the first entrance into manhood.

Here, on this soil, steepest in memories, _his_ problems, _his_ struggles, were to be fought out in their turn, 'Take up thy manhood,' said the inward voice, 'and show what is in thee.

The hour and the opportunity have come!' And to this thrill of vague expectation, this young sense of an expanding world, something of pathos and of sacredness was added by the dumb influences of the old streets and weather-beaten stones.

How tenacious they were of the past! The dreaming city seemed to be still brooding in the autumn calm over the long succession of her sons.