It is very wonderful that the University alone has been able to resist the glamour of Ireland's past, and has failed to admire the persistency of her nationality.
There has surely been enough in every century that has passed since the college was founded to win it over from alien thought and the ideals of the foreigner.
All this Hyacinth came to feel afterwards, and learnt in bitterness of spirit to be angry at the University's isolation from Irish life.

At first quite other thoughts crowded upon his mind.

He felt a rebellion against his father's estimate of what he was to learn.

It seemed to him that he had come into vital touch with the greatest life of all.

He was to join the ranks of those who besieged the ears of God for knowledge, and left behind them to successors yet unborn great traditions of the enigmas they had guessed.