dual who thus perseveringly interfered
with my affairs, and harassed me with his insinuated counsel. But
who and what was this Wilson?--and whence came he?--and what were his
purposes? Upon neither of these points could I be satisfied; merely
ascertaining, in regard to him, that a sudden accident in his family had
caused his removal from Dr. Bransby's academy on the afternoon of the
day in which I myself had eloped. But in a brief period I ceased
to think upon the subject; my attention being all absorbed in
a contemplated departure for Oxford. Thither I soon went; the
uncalculating vanity of my parents furnishing me with an outfit and
annual establishment, which would enable me to indulge at will in
the luxury already so dear to my heart,--to vie in profuseness of
expenditure with the haughtiest heirs of the wealthiest earldoms in
Great Britain.

Excited by such appliances to vice, my constitutional temperament broke
forth with redoubled ardor, and I spurned even the common restraints of
decency in the mad infatuation of my revels. But it were absurd to
pause in the detail of my extravagance. Let it suffice, that among
spendthrifts I out-Heroded Herod, and that, giving name to a multitude
of novel follies, I added no brief appendix to the long catalogue of
vices then usual in the most dissolute university of Europe.

It could hardly be credited, however, that I had, even here, so utterly
fallen from the gentlemanly estate, as to seek acquaintance with the
vilest arts of the gambler by profession, and, having become an adept
in his despicable science, to practise it habitually as a means of
increasing my already enormous income at the expense of the weak-minded
among my fellow-collegians. Such, nevertheless, was the fact. And the
very enormity of this offence against all manly and honourable sentiment
proved, beyond doubt, the main if not the sole reason of the impunity
with which it was committed. Who, indeed, among my most abandoned
associates, would not rather have disputed the clearest evidence of his
senses, than have suspected of such courses, the gay, the frank, the
generous William Wilson--the noblest and most commoner at Oxford--him
whose follies (said his parasites) were but the follies of youth and
unbridled fancy--whose errors but inimitable whim--whose darkest vice
but a careless and dashing extravagance?

I had been now two years successfully busied in this way, when there
came to the university a young