Charles Dickens.]

THE FRESHMAN'S PROGRESS.

159

we only plunge into the more deeply, the more
we fancy that we have shut it out from our
view. There is no lock sufficiently strong to
keep out vicious propensities, any more than
the Hellespont could part Hero from her
Leander, or Bishop Hatto's Rhenish tower
preserve him from the avenging rats. The
boy whom you so fondly cherish, may have
imbibed the first rudiments of pipe-smoking
from the labourer who works in your garden;
he may have drunk out of the spirit-flask of
my lord's gamekeeper, whom he meets in his
walks, when you are not by; he may have
learn to ogle the girls of the village, and you
none the wiser. Things not in themselves,
perhaps, particularly vicious or criminal, but
here are the materials ready laid; and let but
the spark of college temptation be applied, and
they may burn up all the fiercer and brighter
for having lain dry so long.

But, under any circumstances, and sup-
posing him to have already undergone the
ordeal of a school, or a private tutor's establish-
ment—I wish to be understood as speaking of
the middling classes—there are some peculiar
trials to be noted, which now, more particu-
larly than at any other period of his life, will
assail our young friend. He has never in his
life before been entrusted with a larger sum
than five pounds, and here he is with fifty
pounds in his pocket and (though he may not
yet be aware of the fact by bitter experience)
credit to an unlimited extent. He has never
in his life purchased for himself an article of
greater value and importance than a cricket-
bat or a fishing-rod; yet here he is about to
provide himself with all the articles of a
bachelor's establishment, without the remotest
idea of their market price—without knowing
whether the sum he gives for each will be
twenty-five per cent., or fifty per cent., or a
hundred per cent. above its proper value. If
his socks have wanted darning at home, one of
the maid-servants has darned them accord-
ingly ; new shirts and new flannel waistcoats
have succeeded to the senior portion of his
linen by an easy and imperceptible process, by
his mother's watchful care, without his paying
any attention to the matter. He remembers
that to have helped himself to a third glass of
port wine after dinner, would have called a
frown to the face of his father; now, he can
drink champagne or hock for his breakfast, if
he feels so disposed. To be out after ten
o'clock at night would assuredly have
required some explanation at the Vicarage;
now, he is not required to be in his College
till midnight—within those precincts he can
go where he chooses, and spend the whole
night at a roystering party, if he has a mind
to do so. If he run into debt, the discovery
will not, in all probability, be made for three
years and a quarter, till he takes his degree.
Youth is sanguine—by that time his father's
rich fifth cousin may have dropped off, leaving
him a fortune. A thousand things may have
happened. Nor should it be forgotten that—

paradoxical as it may seem—the temptations
to which a Freshman is exposed are tenfold
greater at Cambridge or Oxford than if he
could be permitted, at the same time of life,
and with the same views, to take lodgings in
London, and read for his degree in the metro-
polis itself. In the latter case, surrounded
by virtuous companions, and with persons
older than himself to overlook his conduct,
he might be protected from evil by the very
magnitude of the place in which he resides.
It would start up before him like a phantom
in the gas-lighted street, it would vindicate
its existence in the columns of the newspaper,
but it would not be a dweller in the same
college, in the same quadrangle, on the same
staircase, perhaps in the very next room.
For the smaller the field in which the monster
Vice has to work, the more frequently will he
obtrude himself upon our daily walks and
occupations, and I am not one of those who
believe that he is always hated as soon
as seen.

In the midst of all this, at the period of all
others when he most requires advice and
assistance, what will his Tutor—his College
Tutor—do for him? Is that functionary really
what he is presumed to be—the guardian of
youth, the overseer of his pupils, their adviser,
their reprover, their comforter, their friend?
—or does the multiplicity of his engagements,
and the number of his pupils (about one
hundred and fifty to each tutor, at Trinity)
prevent him from being anything but a far-
off and half-fabulous being, a kind of myth
grown out of the old legends that haunt the
banks of the Cam, and still cherished from a
love of antiquity, or—to speak the plain, sober
truth—a person seen, at most, once at the
beginning and once at the end of every Term,
on hurried visits of ceremony? Will the
Fellows do anything for him—the Fellows,
whose salaries were originally accorded to
them, on the ground that they should act as
tutors to the undergraduates? Or is the
original intention of the Founder adhered to
in those cases only where it is clearly unsuited
to the present day ? Are the greater part of
the Fellows residing elsewhere, and still re-
ceiving their stipends? Are the Universities
to continue, like the Pyramids, immutable
and unchangeable in our land of change and
mutability ? Will the Royal Commission
report on these things?

I am not, however, the Royal Commission—
if I were, I would found my report on other
evidence than that of the Dignitaries and
Fellows, who will, of course, have their views
as to what reforms are necessary—I would
seek evidence that would reveal the rotten-
ness of the system which urges the young
friend whom I pictured departing from the
door of a poor Vicarage, amidst the adieus of
his affectionate and anxious friends, into a
career of debt and vice.

I went on picturing to myself this young
man after a residence at College of a few days.