ipping his claret or
lounging in his gorgeous rooms. To them Bruce's genius was
incontestably proved by the faultless evenness with which he parted his
hair behind, the dapperness of his boots, and the merit of his spotless
shirts.

Sir Rollo Bruce, Vyvyan's father, was a man of no particular family, who
had been knighted on a deputation, and contrived to glitter in the most
splendid circles of London society. His magnificent entertainments, his
exquisite appointments, his apparently fabulous resources, were a
sufficient passport into the saloons of dukes; and, although ostensibly
Sir Rollo had nothing to live on but his salary as the chairman of a
bank, nobody who had the entree of his house cared particularly to
inquire into the sources of his wealth. Vyvyan imitated his father in
his expensive tastes, and cultivated, with vulgar assiduity, the society
of the noblemen at his college. In a short time he knew them all, and
all of them had been at his rooms except a young Lord De Vayne, of whom
we shall hear more hereafter, and whose retiring manners made him shrink
with dislike from Bruce's fawning familiarity.

The sizars at Saint Werner's do not dine at the same hour as the rest of
the undergraduates, but the hour after, and their dinner consists of the
dishes which have previously figured on the Fellows' table. It seems to
me that the time may come when the authorities of that royal foundation
will see reason to regret so unnecessary an arrangement, the relic of a
long, obsolete, and always undesirable system. Many of Saint Werner's
most distinguished alumni have themselves sat at the sizars' table, and
if any of them were blessed or cursed with sensitive dispositions, they
will not be dead to the justice of these remarks. The sizars are, by
birth and education, invariably, so far as I know, the sons of
gentlemen, and perhaps most often of clergymen whose means prevent them
from bearing unassisted the heavy burden of University expenses. After
a short time many of these sizars become scholars, and eventually a
large number of them win for themselves the honours of a fellowship.
Why put on these young students a gratuitous indignity? Why subject
them to the unpleasant remarks which some are quite coarse enough to
make on the subject? The authorities of Saint Werner's are full of real
courtesy and kindness, and that the arrangement is not intended as an
indignity I am well aware; it is, as I have said, the a