With  the  academic  side  Creighton  was  sufficiently
familiar  ;  what  he  needed  now  was  the  practically
pastoral.  Those  who  lamented  that  he  should  be
snatched  from  the  gardens  and  classrooms  of
Oxford,  and  from  their  peripatetic  ingenuities,  had
to  realise  that  their  charming  friend  was  a  very
strong  man,  predestined  to  do  big  things,  and  that
the  time  had  come  when  solitude  and  fixity  were
needful  for  his  spiritual  development.
So  Creighton  went  off  to  Embleton  ;  and  one
remembers  the  impression  among  his  friends  that  it
was  something  worse  for  them,  in  the  way  of  exile,
than  Tomi  could  have  been  for  the  companions  of
Ovid.  But  there  was  a  great  deal  to  mitigate  the
horrors  of  exile.     In  the  first  place,  Embleton  was


Mandell  Crelghton  175

the   best  of  all  the  livings  in  the  gift  of    Merton
College,  and  in  many  respects  delightful,  socially  as
well    as    physically.      The    vicarage    was     a    very
pleasant  house,  nested  in  tall  trees,  which  were  all
the  more  precious  because  of  the  general  bareness
and  bleakness  of  the  grey  Northumbrian  landscape.
