estuary to May Hill and the wooded heights beyond, were exchanged for
the bald sweep and the white chalk-pits of the North Downs. These too
have their unique beauty; but I never remember to have heard Moorman say
anything which showed that he felt it as those who have known such
scenery from boyhood might have expected him to do.

After some five years at Caterham, he began his academical studies at
University College, London; but, on the strength of a scholarship, soon
removed to University College, Aberystwyth (1890), where the
scenery--sea, heron-haunted estuaries, wooded down to the very shore,
and hills here and there rising almost into mountains--offered
surroundings far more congenial to him than the streets and squares of
Bloomsbury.

In these new surroundings, he seems to have been exceptionally happy,
throwing himself into all the interests of the place, athletic as well
as intellectual, and endearing himself both to his teachers and his
fellow-students. His friendship with Professor Herford, then Professor
of English at Aberystwyth, was one of the chief pleasures of his student
days as well as of his after life. Following his natural bent, he
decided to study for Honours in English Language and Literature, and at
the end of his course (1893) was placed in the Second Class by the
examiners for the University of London, to which the Aberystwyth College
was at that time affiliated. Those who believe in the virtue of infant
prodigies--and, in the country which invented Triposes and Class Lists,
it is hard to fix any limit to their number--will be distressed to learn
that, in the opinion of those best qualified to judge of such matters,
he was not at that time reckoned to be of "exceptionally scholarly
calibre." Perhaps this was an omen all the better for his future
prospects as a scholar.