have figured away in parts for which it was hardly possible to have conceived them to have been qualified; and now, that they bear themselves stiffly and proudly, will scarcely vouchsafe to recognise those to whom professions of indelible obligation were once profusely tendered. But this is LIFE; and its drama may be said to have begun when the unsuspecting confidence of undergraduateship has worn away. Farewell, then, to the plans, and schemes, and associations of early manhood!—when every morning's dawn was bright, and the most lengthened day seemed to put on its wings of gold, and to fly too swiftly away! Of all the heads of colleges living, when I entered at Oxford, ONE only survives. "SE

There is, however, or there was, a place, or street, in this university, "hight" Paradise; and when I add that my future destinies were in some measure

But the travellers were also armed, a very common practice in those days and one of them, discharging his pistol, shot Phormio through the heart. It was the hand of the FATHER which drew the trigger of that pistol !

* It will perhaps be immediately understood that Dr. ROUTH, the president of Magdalen College, is here alluded to. That venerable and excellent man, and most profound and pious scholar, yet lives in the full enjoyment of his extensive and well furnished library, and of the high reputation which his classical and theological works have secured him abroad and at home. If, in pensive anticipation of the future, he be sometimes induced to say, with the most finished lyrist of antiquity,

"Linquenda tellus, et domus, et placens
Uxor!"

he may also, in the confident strains of Rome's banished bard, equally exclaim:

Jamque opus exegi: quod nec Jovis ira, nec ignes,

Nec poterit ferrum, nec edax abolere vetustas."

I 2

regulated or fixed in this spot, the reader will be naturally prepared to felicitate me thereon. Sunshine and shade are alternately upon all the sons of men. I have felt the former with a grateful heart, but I have tarried longer in the latter; and yet, if I now trod a palace of marble I could scarcely feel such pure and bounding delight as when, in the time of life recorded, I saw those portals open to which my approach was announced by raising the knocker annexed.

Upon the whole, on a dispassionate and honest review of this tender, and, in many instances, trying period of human life, my conscience does not reproach me with the commission of the slightest act whereby, directly or indirectly, the character, comfort, or peace of mind, of any one individual acquaintance was injured or impaired. That I quitted college at a period of life when perhaps I ought to have entered it, may probably be admitted by many; but the die was cast, and the time is now gone by never to be recalled. Yet THAT TIME leaves no leaden weight upon the conscience for its abuse. With a limited income, and rather a large and miscellaneous acquaintance, I contrived not only to buy books, but to devote leisure to their perusal. I joined in the more manly and cheap exercises of the day, but studiously avoided those amusements which entailed a heavy expense, or tore up the constitution by the roots. If I could sometimes rise with the lark for a day's disporting upon the glassy surface of Isis, I could at others shut myself up in " "my den" for a week's consecutive hard reading, diversified by drawing, and an evening's ramble to Headington.

If, since I have taken my part upon this great THEATRE OF LIFE I have not been distinguished as filling a prominent character, I cannot yet allow myself to be classed amongst those who have had a merely mechanical part to perform, or who have exhibited the ingratitude and wrong-headednesses of such sons of "Alma Mater" as are recorded in the

quaint verses of honest James Howell, the author of Londinopolis*. As to the present scholastic dis

* These appear, in a cluster of similar quaint verses, in a volume of CARTWRIGHT'S COMEDIES and POEMS, printed in 1651, 8vo. Cartwright was a student of Christ Church, and afterwards a proctor of the university. Among the authors of these complimentary strains are Ben Jonson, the Duke of Monmouth, Sir Edw. Dering, Sir Robert Staypleton, Bishop Fell (then a layman), Mayne, Lerigh, and Isaac Walton. Never did the stream of adulation set in more uniformly strong and resistless. Jasper Mayne speaks thus of "Master Cartwright:"

"For thou to nature hadst joined art and skill;

In THEE Ben Jonson still held Shakspeare's quill."

Yet, who now records Cartwright? I guess Bishop Fell to have been a layman at this time, for he thus versifies:

"But I forbear this theme, denied to men

Of common souls, of lay and secular pen ;

It is enough if our unhallowed laies

Stand at the gate and threshhold of his praise."

A little before, he thus speaks of Cartwright in no very cold or unimpassioned strain:

"When that his voice did charm the attentive throng,

And every ear was link'd unto his tongue,

The numerous press, closing their souls in one,

Stood all transform'd into his passion."

The reader was probably not prepared for such verses from a character so well afterwards known as Dean of Christ Church and Bishop of Oxford. But it is time to introduce "honest JAMES HOWELL," with his very peculiar and characteristic lines-pregnant with all the conceit and antithetical disporting of the age. They are addressed to his " dear Mother, the University of Oxford."

"Many do suck thy breasts, but now in som
Thy milk turns into froth and spumy scum;
In others it converts to rheum and fleam,
Or some poor wheyish stuff instead of cream;
In som it doth malignant humors heed,

And make the head turn round as that side Tweed;

cipline of the university, I pretend not to say one word upon it; although, that it is capable of still greater extension and improvement, can scarcely be denied. The lectures of Dr. Buckland form an æra in that discipline; and those of Mr. Senior are not less entitled to notice and commendation. In the time of the "Lunatics," had such men sprung up to enlighten their brethren, the doors of all public buildings would have been shut upon their admission for so praiseworthy an object*.

These humors vapor up unto the brains,
And so break forth to odd fanatic strains.

It makes them dote and rave, fret, fume, and foam,
And strangely from their texts in pulpits roam.

When they should speak of Rheims, they prate of Rome;

Their theam is birch, their preachment is of broom.

Nor 'mong the forders only such are found,
But they who pass the bridge are quite as round.

Som of thy sons prove bastards, sordid, base,
Who, having suck'd thee, throw dirt in thy face;
When they have squeezed thy nipples, and chast papps,
They dash thee on the nose with frumps and rapps;
They grumble at thy commons, buildings, rents,
And would thee bring to farthing decrements.
Few by thy milk sound nutriment now gain,

For want of good concoction of the brain;
But this choice son of thine is no such brat,
Thy milk in him did so coagulat

That it became elixar; as we see

In these mellifluous streams of poesie."

This extract is made from a copy in the Althorp library, enriched by some transcripts of poems of Cartwright in other editions not to be found in the present. These transcripts are by the hand of the Rev. Dr. Bliss.

* I yet adhere to all that is so warmly and unpremeditatedly expressed in the pages of the Bibliophobia (pp. 84-88) respecting what may yet be successfully adopted in the course of a college education.