THE FIRST LONG VACATION.-A BAD START.-THE CAM

THO

HOROUGHLY recruited by a week's rest, and additionally inspirited by the favorable result of the examination, I went down to London for a fortnight to deliver various letters of introduction and see a little of the Great Metropolis. It was the pleasantest and liveliest time of the year, the beginning of June, when even London boasts of a little sun, and the subterranean-looking wilderness of houses and interminable mazes of muddy streets are kindled up with a few stray beams. But I did not know people enough "in town" to dine out every day, and the stranger in London who' does not is apt to find the time hang heavy on his hands -even if there is a general election going on, as there then was; so before fifteen days had elapsed I was back again at Cambridge studying.

Studying in a vacation! Even so; for you may almost take it as a general rule that College regulations. and customs in England are just the reverse of what they are in America. In America you rise and "recite” to your instructor, who is seated; in England you sit

and construe to him as he stands at his desk. In America you go sixteen times a week to chapel, or woe be to you; but then you may stay out of your room all night for a week together, and nobody will know or care. In England you have about seven chapels to keep, and may choose your own time of day, morning or evening, to keep them; but you cannot get out of College after ten at night, and if, being out, you stay till after twelve, you are very likely to hear of it next morning. In America you may go about in any dress that does not outrage decency, and it is not uncommon for youths to attend chapel and "recitation-room" in their ragged dressinggowns, with perhaps the pretext of a cloak; in England you must scrupulously observe the academical garb while within the College walls, and not be too often seen wearing white great-coats or other eccentric garments under it. In America the manufacture of coffee in your room will subject you to suspicion, and should that bugbear, the tutor, find a bottle of wine on your premises, he sets you down for a hardened reprobate; in England you may take your bottle or two or six with as many friends as you please, and unless you disturb the whole court by your exuberant revelry, you need fear no annoyance from your tutor; nay, expand your supper into a stately dinner, and he will come himself (public tutor or private), like a brick as he is, and consume his share of the generous potables, yea, take a hand in your rubber afterwards. In America you may not marry, but your tutor can; in England you may marry, and he can't.*

* The married men at Cambridge are usually such as take Orders late in life; they are men of some property, and become Fellow Commoners of a Small College. A father and son were undergraduates together at Peterhouse in my time. There are some traditional jokes about this class of students, such as that

Five Years in an English University.

105

In America you never think of opening a book in vacation; in England the vacations are the very times when you read most. Indeed, since the vacations occupy more than half the year, he who keeps them idle will not do much work during his College course. Then in the vacations, particularly the Long, there is every facility for reading, that is, no temptation not to read or interruption to your reading-no large dinners, or wine or supper parties, no rowing men making a noise about the courts, no exciting boat-races, no lectures (owing to the private-tutorial system, the public lectures are, with some happy exceptions, rather in the way of than any help to the best men), the chapel rules looser than ever, the town utterly dull and lifeless. When I was ill at Cambridge during the greater part of two Longs, and could only read a few hours each day, I thought it the most lonely and desolate of places. It seemed a town without inhabitants. All the tradesmen who can, leave Cambridge, and of the 1800 students not 200 remain. Those that are left in each College (from half a dozen to forty, as the size of the College may be) are all bound by the common tie of their studies; their very lightest talk has some shop in it, and if not personally acquainted at first, they generally become so before the three months are over. Indeed, so attractive is the VacationCollege life, that the great trouble of the Dons is to keep the men from staying up during the Long. In the Small Colleges it makes a serious difference for the few dignitaries of one of these lesser institutions often want to take a tour en masse and shut up the College, “like

one of them failed repeatedly in his endeavors to obtain a degree, and his son used to come running into the house with "Ma, Pa's plucked again!" A married student is obliged to dine in Hall like the rest, and only freed from "gate" rules.

a boarding-school," say the Trinitarians and Johnians in ridicule. But at Trinity the Scholars and Sizars have a right to remain in residence just as much as the Fellows themselves, being equally "on the foundation;" and here the Undergraduate ranks are augmented by the Bachelors reading for Fellowships. But as the College authorities are in small force, sometimes not more than two or three Fellows being left, all students except Scholars and Sizars are warned off, save some few who obtain permission to stay by particular favor, and among these are always some Freshmen who have done wel in the May. So assiduously does the reading-man set himself to his work from the very beginning.

I spent some six weeks in this way, reading Eschylus and Euripides and taking copious notes thereon. I had few acquaintances of my own standing; they were nearly all Bachelor Scholars; my private tutor was one of them, and we lived very quietly and pleasantly, kneedeep in books all the morning till two, and then strolling about the beautiful grounds in the environs of the town. What little approach to out-door amusements one ever sees among the lower orders here is to be found at this season in the outskirts of Cambridge. About the end of June and beginning of July was a fair,* and we mingled among the people and went through the popular sports, rode in swings, attended the sixpenny itinerary theatres, and laughed at the tragic performance of "Ennery, King of Hingland," and Fair Rosamond. I remember the date from the Fourth of July occurring just afterwards, which I celebrated by a "hang-out," and my English guests drank claret with as much liber

*Not Sturbridge Fair, founded by King John, and formerly very celebrated, but a smaller one called Midsummer or Pot Fair.

ality as if they had had a personal or patriotic interest in the reminiscence. Our after-dinner meetings two or three times a week were very moderate, never exceeding a couple of hours, after which we fell to work again. It was a quiet and virtuous existence, plenty of occupation without fatigue or excitement, and enough relaxation to keep us in the best condition. The only drawback to our felicity was that during the Long, the confectioners, like those of Little Pedlington, made no icecream unless it was ordered the day before; and this was not such a deprivation as it would be in New York, the English summers being not quite so warm as ours. I recollect being obliged to build a fire one day in this very July.

This kind of life had grown upon me so, that I resolved, though somewhat older than I could have wished, and a year above the average age of those in my standing, to go through the whole course, and consequently give up my original project of spending but one year at Cambridge and then proceeding to a German University. A very good resolution, so far as the intention to make myself a scholar was concerned; unfortunately, immediately after it was taken, I went to work so as to destroy most of the benefits of it, by suddenly taking a trip homeward over the Atlantic, under the excuse of having to attend to my affairs. At my departure I was in perfect health, stronger and nimbler than I ever was before or have been since, having practised vaulting over gates and leaping ditches, and other extempore gymnastics in vogue at Cambridge, till my performances actually astonished myself. But I left the thermometer at 70° in Liverpool and found it 90° at Boston, nor did it fall much below that for the two months I was in America. Finally, the confined air of a small stateroom completed