596 The Silent Sister, [JUNE, 



man by his sanctity at the " Asylum ;" another by his vociferations at 

 the club. But the manner is not the question : every junior fellow has 

 as many pupils, as his own influence, with that of his friends, can procure 

 him ; and the average at present to each tutor is about sixty-six. In the 

 tuition of this number, the junior fellow is occupied in term-time, from 

 five to six hours every day ; and he has besides a multiplicity of chapels, 

 lectures, and other academic business to attend to. His collegiate life, 

 therefore, is a species of tread-mill. Year after year, until thirty or forty 

 winters have shed their snows upon his head, he travels through Murray's 

 Logic, Locke's Essay, and Euclid's Elements, through Homer, Horace, 

 and Virgil, putting the same questions, making the same remarks, listen-, 

 ing to the same blunders. A single perusal of Murray would be wil- 

 lingly exchanged, by a man of any pretensions to intellect, for fine and 

 imprisonment. The unhappy junior fellow must undergo this punish-, 

 ment every return of Michaelmas and Hilary. He detests Homer and 

 Horace as cordially as the diner at commons hates a leg of mutton. The 

 former are good poets, and the latter is a good joint ; but the circum- 

 stance of the perusal of Homer and Horace recurring as regularly as the 

 solstice and equinox, creates the same disgust in the mind of the fellow, 

 as the <f quotidian leg of mutton roasted" produces on the palate of the 

 scholar. 



** Occidit miseros crambe repetita magistros." 



From these premises the reputation of the fellow in the literary world 

 may be deduced as easily as a conclusion in Barbara. Miracle it were, 

 if six or seven hours employment in the monotonous routine of a tutor's 

 office even were we to admit the college course to be such as en. 

 lightened men in the present age would wish to render it miracle, we 

 repeat, it were, if six hours so devoted left the mind in a fit state for any 

 kind of application, much less for scientific discovery, or original com- 

 position. When the pedagogue assumes the author, we have reason to 

 expect the crudest and heaviest performances. He will indeed but 

 rarely trouble us with such toilsome relaxations ; the jaded lecturer will 

 seek some easier way to repair his spirits, and unbend his mind ; nor are 

 we to marvel, if he occasionally forfeit the respect of his pupils, and 

 disparages the dignity of the college, in his impetuous quest after diver- 

 sion. Consider the dispiriting and degrading duties of a college lecturer 

 under the existing narrow system of education, and you will cease to be 

 astonished that the tame amusements of a vacant theatre, the dull dissipa- 

 tion of the ball-room, the ferocious pastime of the ring, the uproar of a 

 political club, or even a ride upon " Dycer's Break", have greater 

 charms for one or two reverend and learned clerks, who shall be nameless, 

 than those intellectual labours, by which, under an amended system, they 

 would do credit to themselves, shed a lustre on their body, and perform 

 their duty to the nation. 



There remains to be mentioned another particular in the case of the 

 Junior Fellow, which is most inauspicious for his literary renown. We 

 allude to the life-tenure of his office. A holding of ten years would 

 manifestly be much more advantageous ; for, at the expiration of that 

 term, he would have nothing to depend on but his previously acquired 

 stock of learning and reputation, and the consciousness of this would 

 operate as a continual stimulus to his activity ; whereas the possession 

 of his fellowship for life co-operates with the causes already explained to 



