h some lively fellow who is no
philosopher, will do him far more good than a fagging walk of so many
measured miles, with the studious companion whose head is stuffed as
full of such matter as his own, and whose talk will be of disputed
passages, and dispiriting anticipations of a "dead floorer" in the
schools. But if a man wants to make acquaintance with such books as
Juvenal, or Horace, or Aristophanes, he may surely do it to quite as
good purpose, and with far more relish, basking under a tree in summer,
or with a friend over a bottle in winter.

The false tone of society of which I have been speaking had its
influence upon Horace Leicester. Coming up to the university from a
public school, with a high character, a fair amount of scholarship, and
a host of acquaintances, he won the good-will at once of dons and of
under-graduates, and bid fair to be as universal a favourite at college
as he had been at Harrow. Never did a man enter upon an academic life
under happier auspices, nor, I believe, with a more thorough
determination to enjoy it in every way. He did not look upon his
emancipation from school discipline as a license for idleness, nor
intend to read the less because he could now read what he pleased, and
when he pleased. For, not to mention that Horace was ambitious, and had
at one time an eye to the class list--he had a taste for reading, and a
strong natural talent to appreciate what he read. But if he had a taste
for reading, he had other tastes as well, and, as he thought, not
incompatible; much as he admired his Roman namesake, he could not devote
his evenings exclusively to his society, but preferred carrying out his
precepts occasionally with more modern companions; and he had no notion
that during the next four years of his life he was to take an interest
in no sports but those of the old Greeks and Romans, and mount no horse
but Pegasus. For a term or two, Leicester got on very well, attended
lectures, read steadily till one or two o'clock, when there was nothing
particular going on, kept a horse, hired an alarm, and seldom cut
morning chapel, or missed a meet if within reasonable distance. It was a
course of life, which, in after days, he often referred to with a sigh
as having been most exemplary; and I doubt whether he was far wrong. But
it did not last. For a time his gentlemanly manners, good humour, and
good taste, carried it off with all parties; but it was against the
ordinary routine, and co