the Marsh Gibbon
double timber as gayly and undauntedly as over the accommodating
Bullingdon hurdles. And what screws they rode! ancient animals bearing
as many scars as a _vieux de la vieille_, that were considered short of
work if they did not come out five days a fortnight. This was Guy's
favorite pursuit; but he threw off the superfluity of his animal
energies in all sorts of athletics: in sparring especially he attained a
rare excellence; so well-known was it, indeed, that he passed his first
year without striking a blow in anger, through default of an antagonist,
except a chance one or two exchanged in the _melee_ which is imperative
on the 5th of November.

I did not hunt much myself, for my health was far from strong, and, I
confess, my University recollections are not lively.

After the first flush of novelty had worn off, they bored one
intensely--those large wines and suppers where, night by night, a score
of Nephelegeretae sat shrouded in smoke, chanting the same equivocal
ditties, drinking the same fiery liquors miscalled the juice of the
grape, villainous enough to make the patriarch that planted the vine
stir remorsefully in his grave under Ararat--each man all the while
talking "shop," _a l'outrance_. The skeleton of ennui sat at these
dreary feasts; and it was not even crowned with roses. I often used to
wonder what the majority of my contemporaries conversed about, when in
the bosom of their families, during the "long." They couldn't _always_
have been inflicting Oxford on their miserable relatives; the weakest of
human natures would have revolted against such tyranny; and yet the
horizon of their ideas seemed as utterly bounded by Bagley and
Headington Hill as if the great ocean-stream had flowed outside those
limits. Some adventurous spirits, it is true, stretched away as far as
Woodstock and Abingdon, but I doubt if they returned much improved by
the grand tour.

One of their most remarkable characteristics was the invincible terror
and repugnance that they appeared to entertain to the society of women
of their own class. When the visitation was inevitable, it is
impossible to describe the great horror that fell on these unfortunate
boys. The feeling of Zanoni's pupil, as the Watcher on the Threshold
came floating and creeping toward him, was nothing to it.

For example, at Commemoration--to which festival "lions" from all
quarters of the earth resorted in vast droves--when one of this class
w