190 PRÆTERITA-I

that I knew of, I could not be in danger of hell: while I saw also that even the crême de la crême of religious people seemed to be in no hurry to go to heaven. On the whole, it seemed to me, all that was required of me was to say my prayers, go to church, learn my lessons, obey my parents, and enjoy my dinner.

218. Thus minded, in the slowly granted light of the winter morning I looked out upon the view from my college windows, of Christ Church library and the smooth-gravelled square of Peckwater, vexed a little because I was not in an oriel window looking out on a Gothic chapel: but quite unconscious of the real condemnation I had fallen under, or of the loss that was involved to me in having nothing but Christ Church library, and a gravelled square, to see out of window during the spring-times of two years of youth.

At the moment I felt that, though dull, it was all very grand; and that the architecture, though Renaissance, was bold, learned, well-proportioned, and variously didactic. In reality, I might just as well have been sent to the dungeon of Chillon, except for the damp; better, indeed, if I could have seen the three small trees from the window slit,¹ and good groining and pavement, instead of the modern vulgar upholstery of my room furniture.

Even the first sight of college chapel disappointed me, after the large churches abroad; but its narrow vaults had very different offices.

On the whole, of important places and services for the Christian souls of England, the choir of Christ Church was at that epoch of English history virtually the navel, and seat of life. There remained in it the traditions of Saxon, Norman, Elizabethan, religion unbroken,-the memory of loyalty, the reality of learning, and, in nominal obedience at least, and in the heart of them with true docility, stood

¹ [See Byron’s The Prisoner of Chillon:-

“A small green isle, it seem’d no more,

Scarce broader than my dungeon floor;

But in it there were three small trees,” etc.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]