rsued with that seriousness or that
devout mind which such a study requires) the youth found himself at the
end of one month a Papist, and was about to proclaim his faith; the next
month a Protestant, with Chillingworth; and the third a sceptic, with
Hobbes and Bayle. Whereas honest Tom Tusher never permitted his mind to
stray out of the prescribed University path, accepted the Thirty-nine
Articles with all his heart, and would have signed and sworn to other
nine-and-thirty with entire obedience. Harry's wilfulness in this
matter, and disorderly thoughts and conversation, so shocked and
afflicted his senior, that there grew up a coldness and estrangement
between them, so that they became scarce more than mere acquaintances,
from having been intimate friends when they came to college first.
Politics ran high, too, at the University; and here, also, the young
men were at variance. Tom professed himself, albeit a high-churchman,
a strong King William's-man; whereas Harry brought his family Tory
politics to college with him, to which he must add a dangerous
admiration for Oliver Cromwell, whose side, or King James's by turns,
he often chose to take in the disputes which the young gentlemen used
to hold in each other's rooms, where they debated on the state of the
nation, crowned and deposed kings, and toasted past and present heroes
and beauties in flagons of college ale.

Thus, either from the circumstances of his birth, or the natural
melancholy of his disposition, Esmond came to live very much by himself
during his stay at the University, having neither ambition enough to
distinguish himself in the college career, nor caring to mingle with
the mere pleasures and boyish frolics of the students, who were, for
the most part, two or three years younger than he. He fancied that the
gentlemen of the common-room of his college slighted him on account of
his birth, and hence kept aloof from their society. It may be that
he made the ill will, which he imagined came from them, by his own
behavior, which, as he looks back on it in after life, he now sees
was morose and haughty. At any rate, he was as tenderly grateful for
kindness as he was susceptible of slight and wrong; and, lonely as
he was generally, yet had one or two very warm friendships for his
companions of those days.

One of these was a queer gentleman that resided in the University,
though he was no member of it, and was the professor of a science scarce
recognized i