towns. I have just given you these hints, that you
may escape the errors of our system, and be enabled to avoid the pomp of
learning which is without the power, and acquire the power of knowledge
without the pomp." Here ended the lecture, and my venerable conductor
and myself made the best of our way to pay our respects to the principal
of my future residence.

Arrived here--the principal, a man of great dignity, received us with
all due form, and appeared exceedingly pleased with the visit of my
conductor; my introduction was much improved by a letter from the head
master of Eton, who, I have no doubt, said more in my favour than I
deserved. The appointment of a tutor was the next step, and for this
purpose I was introduced to Mr. Jay, a smart-looking little man, very
polite and very portly, with whom I retired to display my proficiency
in classical knowledge, by a repetition of nearly the same passages in
Homer and Virgil I had construed previously with the learned doctor; the
next arrangement was the sending for a tailor, who quickly produced my
academical robes and cap, in the which, I must confess, I at first
felt rather awkward. I was now hurried to the vice-chancellor's house
adjoining Pembroke college, where I had the honour of a presentation
to that dignitary; a mild-looking man of small stature, with the most
affable and graceful manners, dignified, and yet free from the
slightest tinge of _hauteur_. His reception of my tutor was friendly and
unembarrassing; his inquiries relative to myself directed solely to
my proficiency in the classics, of which I had again to give some
specimens; I was then directed to subscribe my name in a large folio
album, which proved to contain the thirty-nine articles, not one ~127~~
sentence of which I had ever read; but it was too late for hesitation,
and I remembered Tom Echo had informed me I should have to attest to a
great deal of nonsense, which no one ever took the pains to understand.
The remainder of this formal initiation was soon despatched: I
separately abjured the damnable doctrines of the pope, swore allegiance
to the king, and vowed to preserve the statutes and privileges of the
society I was then admitted into; paid my appointed fees, made my bow to
the vice-chancellor, and now concluded that the ceremony of the _togati_
was all over: in this, however, I was mistaken; my tutor requesting some
conference with me at his rooms, thither we proceeded, and arranged the