of fact John Williams. He was certainly
a fast young man. The four corners of his
college cap were wont to droop over his
twinkling eyes, like ivy leaves upon the brow
of the youthful Bacchus; the wood which
ought to have sustained them horizontally,
having been broken to pieces in some
convivial struggle. His gown, also, from the
same cause, used to hang in such tattered
strips as would have caused him to be taken
up, in any other than an university town,
as a rogue and vagabond. This seedy
academical costume of his, contrasted strangely
with the splendour and fashion of his other
garments. So high and stift were his all-
rounders, that his head could not be moved
independent of his body, which rotated like
a trussed fowl upon a spit; the golden chain
which connects one waistcoat pocket with
the other was like a ship's cable; his shirt
was of many colours, and curiously and
richly fastened at the wrists by turquoise
studs. His legs— that is to say, his trousers
—were striped with yellow, and green, and
red, like a geological strata map; and his
face reflected a mind serene, and more than
satisfied with his personal appearance. He
had generally, a pocketful of visiting cards,
with " Wine with me after hall, old boy,"
written upon each of them. In the centre
of his sitting-room table he kept an expanding
cigar-case for the use of all comers,
which held fifty weeds. He was for these
and other reasons, one of the most popular
men in the college.

To see him come into the divinity lecture-
room (where he had, of course, to make his
appearance pretty often, since he was
destined for the ministry) always at full speed,
and with scarcely a second of time to spare
before the door closed, was an interesting
sight. Upon one occasion, Jack, who
generally sat in my neighbourhood was very
boastful about the footing on which he stood
with the Professor. " As he took my card,
just now,"—every man gives up his card at
each attendance, for, only by the number of
cards at the end of the term, is it known
how many lectures he has kept—" the
doctor nodded," said Jack; " you seedy
chaps pass in without any particular notice
being taken of you; but the old trump
bowed to me."

I happened to be wining with the reverend
—I mean with Jack Williams— upon that
particular evening, and a very noisy Wine it
was. It had begun after hall, as usual, and
we had intended to go to chapel, but had
stayed on, and chapel was now over. It had
been proposed and carried, nem. con., that
the hour had arrived when brandy-punch
would be preferable to wine, or, at all events,
a seasonable change.

Everybody was smoking, with the exception
of two young gentlemen, each of whom
had volunteered a song at the same time,
and declining to give way to his rival, was
singing his own melody; in the one case
it was a sentimental ballad, in the other,
a comic song. The fiddlers— Jack was fond
of secular music— were scraping incessantly
in the next room. The noise was at its
climax, and the atmosphere something like
that of the black hole of Calcutta after the
first hour, when there came a knock at the
door. Jack had found it more comfortable
by this time to sit with his legs upon the
table, so that we saw a greater expanse than
before of the yellow, and green, and red.

The knock at the door being repeated,
Jack called out, rather savagely, "Come
in! " We could not see who it was at first,
on account of the atmosphere; but the new
arrival was clearly only a freshman, since he
sneezed and coughed like one who could not
stand the smoke,—an accomplishment which
only comes at the university by degrees.
When his face became visible, however, that
of our poor host became sadly changed. He
tried to get up on his strata legs and
apologise; but legs and tongue refused their
offices. That divinity bow had come home
to him with a vengeance: he had given the
wrong card to that Trump the Professor, and
had asked that august personage himself, to
wine with him.

The Doctor happened to belong to that
then new order of Dons who opined that
greater social intercourse should take place
between the authorities and the
undergraduates, and had therefore accepted the
invitation. He did not, however, upon this
particular occasion, remain with us long.

Poor Jack himself never quite recovered
from this contretemps, and was plucked by
the Professor for his first Voluntary Theo-
logical (as the young man affirmed) through
spite. I have my doubts whether there
were not other reasons for his failure in
that ordeal. Jack had the credit of being
the first man who took that famous
geographical view of Gamaliel, —namely, that he
was a mountain in Thrace, at whose feet Saint
Paul was brought up; and who described the
profession of the first Gentile convert to be
that of music, because we learn that he was
the leader of the Italian band.

The Reverend John Williams, curate of
Bettysomething in Caernarvonshire, came up
to spend a week or two with me at college
last summer. He wore a suit of rather rusty
black, with bluchers at one end of it, and a
not very good hat at the other; and he
carried a cotton umbrella, inferior in bulk only
to that of Mrs. Gamp. With this weapon he
was very nearly breaking all the newly painted
windows in our college chapel. He said it
would be better so, than that they should be
allowed to break the second commandment.
I endeavoured to calm him by the assurance
that that did not meet the case, since the
representations were like nothing in nature,
but only resembled the willow-pattern images
of the Chinese; but I was only partially