sit on the English Bench.] has come up and taken the rooms over me. He
seems a nice kind of fellow; of course, a strong Romanist."

Shee remained till the end Dilke's chief competitor, and he was also one
of the band of friends who met each other incessantly, and incessantly
talked over first principles till the small hours of morning. Perhaps it
is not without importance that Charles Dilke should have had the
experience, not very common for Englishmen, of living on terms of intimacy
with an Irish Roman Catholic: at all events, his relations in after-life,
both with Irishmen and with Roman Catholics, were more friendly than is
common. For the moment Shee made one factor in the discussions upon
theology which are inevitable among undergraduates, and which went on with
vigour in this little group, according to the recollection of Judge
Steavenson, who in those days, faithful to the orthodoxy of his Low Church
upbringing, found himself ranged by the side of the 'strong Romanist'
against a general onslaught upon Christianity. Charley Dilke himself had
come under the influences of the place and the time. There is an entry
headed May, 1863: "I find a fair argument against miracles in my notes for
this month." He had abandoned attendance at Communion, but, according to
Judge Steavenson, did not go further in opinions or in talk than a vague
agnosticism--which was also the attitude of another subtle and agile
intelligence in that circle.

Turning over, in 1891, the boxes which held his letters and papers of
college days, Charles Dilke wrote:

"1863.

"In every page of the destroyed notebooks of this year I could see the
influence of two men--my grandfather and H. D. Warr." [Footnote: Mr.