came to take away our candle, and brought a
light of his own with him, was my being
recognised by my companions. I can only
compare their horrid exultation at that
moment to that which demons are said to
testify at any unexpected accession to their
party. They executed a pas-de-cinq at once,
partly on the floor, but principally, and
always three at a time, upon my body; they
made of me an extempore battering-ram.,
stole softly out into the passage and knocked
over the opposition Cavé with that astounding
weapon; they—but it is enough to say that
they behaved as only the real, good old,
constitutional, pattern, Parliament-belauded
British schoolboy, when he gets a forlorn
victim to torment, and is in the enjoyment
of good animal spirits, can behave. I have
heard, indeed, that Caffres, when intoxicated
and under the influence of hereditary revenge,
are almost as cruel, but I don't believe it.

For my part, that first night at school has
stood out for my life long a sublime memorial
of wretchedness, compared with which
all other possible miseries fade away and are
not. Toil, poverty, exile, nay, sea-sickness
itself, are trifles light as air when weighed
against that. When I think of my natural
sensitiveness at that time, and of my extreme
youth, it is positively a wonder to me that I
survived. After I had been sufficiently
pounded, torn to pieces, trodden on, I was
let fall somewhere, and molested no further.
Then it began to seem to me that I had been
dropped ever so long ago out of Heaven
where my mother lived, and was never more
to return to it again. There was indeed an
appointed limit for the banishment, but it
was so far off that it appeared almost
nominal. I counted it, however, hour by
hour: thirteen weeks, ninety-one days, two
thousand one hundred and eight-four hours,
or one hundred and thirty-one thousand and
forty minutes, to the vacation. What had I
done to deserve all this? I pondered. What
good was to come of it? Would it not be
better to die! And now I fell asleep, and
dreamed the sweetest of dreams, about my
sister Harriet and the pony; of haymaking in
the fields at home and syllabub afterwards;
of how, above all, I was never never to
leave home again; of my father bringing me
a watch upon my birthday, and saying, with
an affectionate smile——

"A quarter to seven, young gents, a quarter
to seven."

Alas! I was awakened by the school
butler saying this as he came to call us, as I
lay upon the bare boards bruised and shivering,
among strange cruel faces—left behind
at school; and never, or as good as never, to
be called for.

It was after I lost my seven thousand
pounds in the rag and bone business, and was
existing upon fifty pounds per annum, paid
quarterly, that I revisited, alter ten years'
absence, the University of Oxford. I was on
foot and weary at the end of this my second
day's journey from London, and I sat
down in a field upon the right of Bagley
Wood, that looks down upon the town of
towns. There was a gate close by, over
which I remembered to have leaped my
horse upon my last visit to this place.
Three of my most intimate college friends
were then with me—Travers of Trinity,
Stuart of Brazenose, and Gory Gumps, which
was what we all called Grindwell of Magdalen,
but why we did so I had forgotten. Our
conversation on that same day had been
about our futures when we should have to
leave this ancient place, whose high and
noble associations had had less effect upon
us, perhaps, than its genial influences. We
knew then that we should one day regret that
time of our hot youth when we walked in the
ways of our heart and in the sight of our
eyes, putting sorrow far away from us—when
friends were many and foes were none, and
all the months were May; but I, for my
part, had never guessed how bitterly. I
could never have looked forward—or I
should, as a philanthropist, have slain myself
—to this miserable hour, ten years away,
when the beautiful river yonder, glittering
in the sun, upon which I had so often passed
the summer noons, should be as the waters
of bitterness that came in even over my
soul. I could see the green Christchurch
meadows, and the thin dark stream of
Cherwell, and that fair tall tower of
Magdalen standing by the bridge; and the whole
prospect mocked me with its beauty more
than the mirage of the desert mocks the
traveller. The water was there, truly, but I
was never more to drink of it. I got up and
walked towards Oxford with a weight at my
heart—a physical weight, even as it seemed,
heavier than that of the knapsack I carried
on my shoulders. Two or three parties of
young horsemen met or overtook me at full
speed, covering me with mud from their
horses' hoofs. Then I came amongst the
constitutionalists, the reading men, who go out
walking for their health's sake; and when I
had crossed the Isis, among those in cap and.
gown, it was like a perfect retrogression of
my life ten years, except for some vague,
frightful difference that I could not altogether
lose sight of. Such of the conversation, even,
as I caught of the passers-by was precisely
such as I used to hold and hear myself;
about the bump that should have been
decided foul—of him that had been screwed at
supper—of him that was a safe double-first.
The great Christchurch clock pealed forth
the quarter to our Magdalen dinner-hour as
I passed its gateway. We three had ridden
in upon that day I mentioned, exactly at this
very time. Travers was now a member of
parliament, of which we had always
suspected him at the Union, where he had been
very noisy; Stuart, who was always going up
to town to dine with city companies, and