112 CAMBRIDGE. [ch. v. 



beaten on the day before, he picked up a bird not quite dead, 

 but lingering from a shot it had received on the previous 

 day ; and that it had made and left such a painful impres- 

 sion on his mind, that he could not reconcile it to his con- 

 science to continue to derive pleasure from a sport which 

 inflicted such cruel suffering." 



To realise the strength of the feeling that led to this 

 resolve, we must remember how passionate was his love of 

 sport. We must recall the boy shooting his first snipe,* and 

 trembling with excitement so that he could hardly reload 

 his gun. Or think of such a sentence as, " Upon my soul, 

 it is only about a fortnight to the ' First,' then if there is a 

 bliss on earth that is it."f 



His old college friends agree in speaking with affection- 

 ate warmth of his pleasant, genial temper as a young man. 

 From what they have been able to tell me, I gain the im- 

 pression of a young man overflowing with animal sjiirits 

 leading a varied healthy life not over-industrious in the 

 set studies of the place, but full of other pursuits, which 

 were followed with a rejoicing enthusiasm. Entomology, 

 riding, shooting in the fens, suppers and card-playing, 

 music at King's Chapel, engravings at the Fitzwilliam Mu- 

 seum, walks with Professor Henslow all combined to fill 

 up a happy life. He seems to have infected others with his 

 enthusiasm. Mr. Herbert relates how, while on a reading- 

 party at Barmouth, he was pressed into the service of " the 

 science " as my father called collecting beetles : 



" He armed me with a bottle of alcohol, in which I had 

 to drop any beetle which struck me as not of a common 

 kind. I performed this duty with some diligence in my 

 constitutional walks ; but, alas ! my powers of discrimination 

 seldom enabled me to secure a prize the usual result, on 

 his examining the contents of my bottle, being an exclama- 

 tion, ' Well, old Cherbury ' J (the nickbame he gave me, and 

 by which he usually addressed me), ' none of these will do.' " 

 Again, the Rev. T. Butler, who was one of the Barmouth 

 reading-party in 1828, says : " He inoculated me with a 

 taste for Botany which has stuck by me all my life." 



Archdeacon Watkins, another old college friend of my 

 father's, remembered him unearthing beetles in the willows 



* Autobiography, p. 10. 



+ From a letter to W. D. Fox. 



% No doubt in allusion to the title of Lord Herbert of Cherbury. 



