Lord Spencer Himself Took Me To Ely; And
There I Remained For Two Years.
They were two very important
years of my life.
Having no fellow pupil to beguile me, I
was the more industrious. But it was not from the better
acquaintance with ancient literature that I mainly benefited,
- it was from my initiation to modern thought. I was a
constant guest at the Deanery; where I frequently met such
men as Sedgwick, Airey the Astronomer-Royal, Selwyn, Phelps
the Master of Sydney, Canon Heaviside the master of
Haileybury, and many other friends of the Dean's,
distinguished in science, literature, and art. Here I heard
discussed opinions on these subjects by some of their leading
representatives. Naturally, as many of them were Churchmen,
conversation often turned on the bearing of modern science,
of geology especially if Sedgwick were of the party, upon
Mosaic cosmogony, or Biblical exegesis generally.
The knowledge of these learned men, the lucidity with which
they expressed their views, and the earnestness with which
they defended them, captivated my attention, and opened to me
a new world of surpassing interest and gravity.
What startled me most was the spirit in which a man of
Sedgwick's intellectual power protested against the possible
encroachments of his own branch of science upon the orthodox
tenets of the Church. Just about this time an anonymous book
appeared, which, though long since forgotten, caused no
slight disturbance amongst dogmatic theologians. The
tendency of this book, 'Vestiges of the Creation,' was, or
was then held to be, antagonistic to the arguments from
design.
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