CROCODILE ISLAND. 



My favourite inn at Oxford was the Golden Cross. The 

 Angel was admirable in its way; the Star celestial; and the 

 Mitre fit for an archbishop, — but the snug room on the left of the 

 inner court of the Golden Cross was superior to them all. There 

 seemed to be more comfort there than in the gaudier apartments 

 of its rivals, and the company one met with was generally more 

 inclined to be social. About eight o'clock in the evening was the 

 *•' witching time o' night," for at that hour the multitudinous 

 coaches from the North poured in their hungry passengers to a 

 plentiful, hot supper. In these hurried refections I invariably 

 joined. Half an hour very often sufficed to give me glimpses of 

 good fellows whom it only required time to ripen into friends. 

 Many strange mortals I saw, who furnished me with materials 

 for thinking till the next evening; and sometimes I have been 

 rewarded for the wing of a fowl by a glance from a pair of beau- 

 tiful, bright eyes which knocked all the classics, and even Aldrich's 

 Logic, out of my head for a week. Three coaches, I think, met 

 at the Golden Cross. There was very little time for ceremony ; 

 the passengers made the best use of the short period allowed them, 

 and devoted more attention to the viands before them than to the 

 courtesies of polished life. I made myself generally useful as a 

 carver, and did the honours of the table in the best manner I 

 could. One night I was waiting impatiently for the arrival of 

 the coaches, and wondering what sort of company they would 

 present to me, when a young man came into the room and sat 

 down at a small table before the fire, who immediately excited my 

 curiosity. He called for sandwiches, and rum and water, and 

 interrupted his active labours in swallowing them only by deep 

 and often-repeated sighs. He was tall and strikingly handsome. 

 I should have guessed him to be little more than one or two and 

 twenty, had it not been for a fixedness about the brow and eyes 

 which we seldom meet with at so early a time of life. I was 

 anxious to enter into conversation with him ; for, as I have said, 

 I was greatly interested by his appearance. I thought I knew 

 the faces of all the University ; and I was certain I had never met 

 with him before. He had not the general appearance of a gowns- 

 man; he was tastefully and plainly dressed; obviously in very 

 low spirits; and finished his second tumbler in the twinkling of a 

 bedpost. As the third was laid down before him, I had just 

 given the preliminary cough with which a stranger usually com- 

 voL. IV. — 1834. B 



