He spent it, as well as the thoughts and conversation of his less strenuous moments, on the study of history and sociology, with a view to joining the staff of lecturers for the manufacturing and country towns which the two great Universities, touched by new and popular sympathies, were then beginning to organise.
He came of a stock which promised well for such a pioneer's task.

His father had been an able factory inspector, well-known for his share in the inauguration and revision of certain important factory reforms; the son inherited a passionate humanity of soul; and added to it a magnetic and personal charm which soon made him a remarkable power, not only in his own college, but among the finer spirits of the University generally.

He had the gift which enables a man, sitting perhaps after dinner in a mixed society of his college contemporaries, to lead the way imperceptibly from the casual subjects of the hour--the river, the dons, the schools--to arguments "of great pith and moment," discussions that search the moral and intellectual powers of the men concerned to the utmost, without exciting distrust or any but an argumentative opposition, Edward Hallin could do this without a pose, without a false note, nay, rather by the natural force of a boyish intensity and simplicity.

To many a Trinity man in after life the memory of his slight figure and fair head, of the eager slightly parted mouth, of the eyes glowing with some inward vision, and of the gesture with which he would spring up at some critical point to deliver himself, standing amid his seated and often dissentient auditors, came back vivid and ineffaceable as only youth can make the image of its prophets.
Upon Aldous Raeburn, Edward Hallin produced from the first a deep impression.

The interests to which Hallin's mind soon became exclusively devoted--such as the systematic study of English poverty, or of the relation of religion to social life, reforms of the land and of the Church--overflowed upon Raeburn with a kindling and disturbing force.
Edward Hallin was his gad-fly; and he had no resource, because he loved his tormentor.
Fundamentally, the two men were widely different.