nly when
they grow old that they know they know nothing of the science, when
perhaps their conscience whispers them that the science is in itself
little worth, and that a leg of mutton and content is as good as the
dinners of pontiffs. But little Pen, in his character of Admirable
Crichton, thought it necessary to be a great judge and practitioner of
dinners; we have just said how the college cook respected him, and shall
soon have to deplore that that worthy man so blindly trusted our Pen. In
the third year of the lad's residence at Oxbridge, his staircase was by
no means encumbered with dish-covers and desserts, and waiters carrying
in dishes, and skips opening iced champagne; crowds of different sorts
of attendants, with faces sulky or piteous, hung about the outer oak,
and assailed the unfortunate lad as he issued out of his den.

Nor did his guardian's advice take any effect, or induce Mr. Pen to
avoid the society of the disreputable Mr. Bloundell. What young men like
in their companions is, what had got Pen a great part of his own repute
and popularity, a real or supposed knowledge of life. A man who has seen
the world, or can speak of it with a knowing air--a roue, or Lovelace,
who has his adventures to relate, is sure of an admiring audience among
boys. It is hard to confess, but so it is. We respect that sort of
prowess. From our school-days we have been taught to admire it. Are
there five in the hundred, out of the hundreds and hundreds of English
school-boys, brought up at our great schools and colleges, that must not
own at one time of their lives to having read and liked Don Juan? Awful
propagation of evil!--The idea of it should make the man tremble who
holds the pen, lest untruth, or impurity, or unjust anger, or unjust
praise escape it.

One such diseased creature as this is enough to infect a whole colony,
and the tutors of Boniface began to find the moral tone of their college
lowered and their young men growing unruly, and almost ungentleman-like,
soon after Mr. Bloundell's arrival at Oxbridge. The young magnates of
the neighbouring great College of St. George's, who regarded Pen, and in
whose society he lived, were not taken in by Bloundell's flashy graces,
and rakish airs of fashion. Broadbent called him Captain Macheath, and
said he would live to be hanged. Foker, during his brief stay at the
university with Macheath, with characteristic caution declined to say
anything in the Captain's disfavour,