158

HOUSEHOLD WORDS.

[Conducted by

roof of the carriage, seemed, by its flickering
rays, to attest, rather than to dispel, the
presence of night. A thick fog rolled over
the already darkened fields, and pressed
against the closed windows. I could not help
thinking of the light-hearted companions from
whom I had just parted; I thought—shall I
own it—with regret upon my own college
career; I thought upon the Universities them-
selves, not as some do with a feeling akin to
contempt, as though they were Augean stables
which none but a Hercules could cleanse; nor
as others, who gaze upon them with rapture,
as if beholding an embodied perfection; but
rather with a sense of regret as of something
noble, which has been diverted from its right
use. It appeared to me—and the circum-
stances of time, scene, and place, will account
for, if they do not excuse the poor metaphor
—that I saw two fine engines torn from the
iron road of progress, and drawn slowly along
the great highway of learning by a pair of
broken-winded, ill-conditioned old mules,
Sloth and Bigotry.

Those young men too, the current of whose
lives had been ordained for a few moments to
mingle with mine, in what light would they
look back upon this very evening, if it arose,
in after years, to haunt them on a lonely
journey, or in a sick chamber? They would
contemplate it, no doubt, as a new era in their
existence, but an era of what kind? Of more
earnest perseverance, of increased usefulness,
of nobler aims and aspirations? Or of feverish
excitement, unreal pleasure, dissipation and
debt? Would the University, upon whose
books their names were enrolled, put forth all
her mighty energies, employ all her resources,
to urge them on in the one path, and to keep
them from the other? Or would these be left
to their own choice? Such fancies mingled
with the bitter experience of past years, and
with a faint hope for the future, raised by the
reflection that the public were getting im-
patient of the rusty teaching and lax training
of the two ancient seats of learning. This
stream of thought flowed on until it seemed
to assume a definite form, and out of it I
shaped a picture for myself, not like that of
poets and dreamers, drawing its colours from
an unseen and unreal world, but needing,
alas! only the framework of name and in-
dividuality to become a true representation
of what is taking place every year—yes, every
year, that Mr. Christie rises to demand a
reform in our Universities, and that Sir Robert
Inglis sounds the alarm at his post to save
the Academic Capitol from invaders, which
have at last made a small and polished breach,
through which, in ample state, the Royal
Commission is about to enter.

I pictured to myself a young man, of
eighteen or nineteen, leaving home for the
first time. His father, the good old clergy-
man, is in the hall beside the corded trunks.
His mother and his sisters stand around him.
A moment more and the trunks are on the

fly. A tender farewell is waved to him from
the hands of the assembled family. Little
scraps of advice and affection are wafted to
him on their latest breath. Crack goes the
whip, the wheels go round, the green garden-
gate opens with a creaking sound—as if it too
had its share in the general solicitude—and a
new world lies before him.

While this young man—call him what you
please—is hurrying onwards towards a scene
of which he has hitherto had no experience,
let us pause for a moment and consider his
true position, as well as that of hundreds of
others who are similarly situated. Divesting
him of the fictitious interest, with which the
time and circumstances may, in the opinion of
some, appear to invest him—losing sight for
a minute of the fact that he is about to " walk
in the shades of Academe," or "to breathe
the spirit of Mathesis," or " to stray on the
banks of the argent Cam," or " to become a
bulwark of our glorious Collegiate institu-
tions,"—let us calculate some of the difficulties
which will first present themselves in his
future course, and how he is prepared to
guard against them.

He has been educated at home, perhaps,
strictly under the parental eye—for I know
many parents who think this kind of educa-
tion the surest protection against future
temptation. He has not been suffered to
learn what vice is. He has been guarded
from the society of the profligate Smiths and
Joneses of the neighbourhood. His reading
has been superintended in the same careful
manner. His " Hume's History of England"
is a "Mitchell's Hume" with the sceptical
passages left out. He has never heard of
Don Juan, or been inside a theatre. The
races take place twice every year within a
mile of the vicarage, but he has never been to
them. He has never been down in the
morning later than half-past seven o'clock, or
been out of bed by ten at night. He waters
the mignonette beds with his sisters after
breakfast, and listens to the touching English
ballads which they sing of an evening. A
youth, so brought up, is surely—if any one
can be—secure from harm.

In a word, he has been kept as a child up
to the very moment of his becoming a man.
With the thoughts of a child, and the feelings
of a child, and the strength of a child, he is of
a sudden to be brought in contact with the
world of Cambridge or Oxford, which, though
on a smaller scale, is still a faithful representa-
tion—it is a daguerreotype, not a miniature—
of the great world beyond. He may, of course,
stand the ordeal—in very many cases, he does
—but it will be in spite of his early training,
not by means of it.

I would not, however, be perfectly sure that
the youth whom we are picturing to ourselves
is so innocent as his friends give him credit
for. To the deepest dungeon and the most
secluded hermitage some whispers of the
world will float, of that world which, perhaps,