uth are they, and fellows well met. Out of their
superfluities they give nothing to the Lord or His saints; no, not
even stirrup or girth, wherewith we may mount our horses and go forth
against those who thirst for our blood. Their eyes are fat, and they
raise not up their voices to cry for our deliverance.

_Sir Oliver._ Art mad? What stirrups and girths are hung up in
college halls and libraries? For what are these gentlemen brought
hither?

_Oliver._ They have elected me, with somewhat short of unanimity, not
indeed to be one of themselves, for of that distinction I acknowledge
and deplore my unworthiness, nor indeed to be a poor scholar, to
which, unless it be a very poor one, I have almost as small
pretension, but simply to undertake a while the heavier office of
bursar for them; to cast up their accounts; to overlook the scouring
of their plate; and to lay a list thereof, with a few specimens,
before those who fight the fight of the Lord, that His saints, seeing
the abasement of the proud and the chastisement of worldly-mindedness,
may rejoice.

_Sir Oliver._ I am grown accustomed to such saints and such
rejoicings. But, little could I have thought, threescore years ago,
that the hearty and jovial people of England would ever join in so
filching and stabbing a jocularity. Even the petticoated torchbearers
from rotten Rome, who lighted the faggots in Smithfield some years
before, if more blustering and cocksy, were less bitter and vulturine.
They were all intolerant, but they were not all hypocritical; they had
not always '_the Lord_' in their mouth.

_Oliver._ According to their own notions, they might have had, at an
outlay of a farthing.

_Sir Oliver._ Art facetious, Nol? for it is as hard to find that out
as anything else in thee, only it makes thee look, at times, a little
the grimmer and sourer.

But, regarding these gentlemen from Cambridge. Not being such as, by
their habits and professions, could have opposed you in the field, I
hold it unmilitary and unmanly to put them under any restraint, and to
lead them away from their peaceful and useful occupations.

_Oliver._ I always bow submissively before the judgment of mine
elders; and the more reverentially when I know them to be endowed with
greater wisdom, and guided by surer experience than myself. Alas!
these collegians not only are strong men, as you may readily see if
you measure them round the waistband, but boisterous and pertinacious
challe