nts to just nothing at all. Immediately he arrives at
the university, he is besieged by tradesmen. It is particularly
impressed upon him, that money is not necessary to conclude a bargain.
He can pay when he likes. Three years hence will do. The youth is sorely
tempted. He finds his new college acquaintance sailing under press of
canvas, over the sea of extravagance. They give splendid wine parties,
and invite him to the jovial board. He is bound to return the
hospitality of these prime fellows. One extravagance leads to another.
The port and sherry, that he could afford, shine no more upon his table.
He drinks hock now, and claret, and princely champagne, at two dollars
and fifty cents a bottle. He smokes cigars at $10 a pound. He is living
like a gentleman. Let the poor sizar toil over musty books; he will have
a race horse. 'Tis a fine life. How much better than a schoolboy's. He
speaks of his father as _the governor_, and talks in a flash manner of
the girls he is acquainted with. He thinks he will marry one of them,
but his choice is not determined. The college dons, professors, tutors,
fellows, know the temptations, know the risk, know the ruinous goal, but
no one arrests his career. Which is most to blame; the raw,
undisciplined boy, or the evil university system?

I passed a rare time at Cambridge. What delight it was in those cold
mornings to take a bracing walk into the country, and looking back over
miles of level land, to behold the chapel of King's College, and the
tower of St. Mary's church, which had been the land beacons of aspiring
students for so many generations! I verily believe that the chapel of
King's College is the finest piece of modern architecture in the world.
It is a poem in stone! Teaching so much--not of this earth, only; least
of this earth, perhaps. I never wearied of walking in it, and around it,
repeating Wordsworth's sonnet, and feeling that 'for a few white-robed
scholars only,' it was not built; but as an utterance of man's spirit,
more fervent than he could express in the articulate speech of man. The
soul of the individual, nurtured by any semblance of culture, who can
stand unmoved beneath that fretted roof, must be cold as the frozen
zone. It remains with me, like Niagara.

As a college, Trinity is the most interesting. The chapel is very
inferior to that of King's, but it is hallowed by the memory of Newton.
Roubiliac's statue of the philosopher is the chief object of interest,