a check, used to make the gray hairs, which were the brave old huntsman’s crown of glory, stand on end with indignation and terror, so that he prayed devoutly for a big fence which, like the broken bridge at Leipsic, might prove a stopper to the pursuing army.  There was the making of a good rider in many of them, too; they only wanted ballast, for they knew no more of fear than Nelson did, and would grind over the Vale of the Evenlode and the Marsh Gibbon double timber as gayly and undauntedly as over the accommodating Bullingdon hurdles.  And what screws they rode! ancient animals bearing as many scars as a vieux de la vieille, that were considered short of work if they did not come out five days a fortnight.  This was Guy’s favorite pursuit; but he threw off the superfluity of his animal energies in all sorts of athletics:  in sparring especially he attained a rare excellence; so well-known was it, indeed, that he passed his first year without striking a blow in anger, through default of an antagonist, except a chance one or two exchanged in the melee which is imperative on the 5th of November.

I did not hunt much myself, for my health was far from strong, and, I confess, my University recollections are not lively.

After the first flush of novelty had worn off, they bored one intensely—­those large wines and suppers where, night by night, a score of Nephelegeretae sat shrouded in smoke, chanting the same equivocal ditties, drinking the same fiery liquors miscalled the juice of the grape, villainous enough to make the patriarch that planted the vine stir remorsefully in his grave under Ararat—­each man all the while talking “shop,” a l’outrance.  The skeleton of ennui sat at these dreary feasts; and it was not even crowned with roses.  I often used to wonder what the majority of my contemporaries conversed about, when in the bosom of their families, during the “long.”  They couldn’t always have been inflicting Oxford on their miserable relatives; the weakest of human natures would have revolted against such tyranny; and yet the horizon of their ideas seemed as utterly bounded by Bagley and Headington Hill as if the great ocean-stream had flowed outside those limits.  Some adventurous spirits, it is true, stretched away as far as Woodstock and Abingdon, but I doubt if they returned much improved by the grand tour.

One of their most remarkable characteristics was the invincible terror and repugnance that they appeared to entertain to the society of women of their own class.  When the visitation was inevitable, it is impossible to describe the great horror that fell on these unfortunate boys.  The feeling of Zanoni’s pupil, as the Watcher on the Threshold came floating and creeping toward him, was nothing to it.