464 Three Years at Cambridge. [ May, 
morals, that he possessed the singular and enviable recommendation of 
being the only virgin in Cambridge. His dress, like his intellect, -was 
quaint and antique ; his coat dated from the Pyramids, his breeches 
from the Christian era, his stockings were infants during the dynasty 
of the Plantaganets, and, as for his hat, it was one of those obscure his- 
torical matters whose origin is lost in the remoteness of antiquity. To 
enhance the graces of his countenance, he wore huge black horn specta- 
cles, which, whenever he wished to see remarkably well, he never failed 
to take off, and has even been known to hunt for them a full half-hour, 
when all the time they were quietly seated astride his nose. It is but 
justice to this eminent individual to add, that he was seldom seen abroad 
without a face thickly coated with dust, which gave his countenance a 
sort of mahogany tinge, and made it look so crisp and dry, that, when 
slapped, an experimentalist would be apt to fancy it would crackle like 
a piece of parchment. Report gave T. n the credit of washing once a 
week: this, however, I feel bound in honour to declare is base, false, 
and calumnious. 
On returning to my lodgings, after my first interview with this gent., 
in the course of which I was supplied with every possible variety of 
useless exhortation, I found my table thick spread with tradesmen’s cir- 
culars, stating in business-like terms their anxiety for the honour of my’ 
custom. ~Here was temptation with a vengeance! Luckily I had the 
good sense to resist, and to content myself with a few absolute necessaries, 
for which I proffered immediate payment—a silly habit, and one, as I 
afterwards had reason to find, peculiarly unfashionable at Cambridge. 
On the third day of my arrival I made my first appearance at the Col- 
lege Lecture Rooms. The subjects of the lecture were the five first 
propositions of Euclid, and a few pages of Wood’s Algebra. This was 
bad enough ; but, unfortunately, T n’s mode of tuition rendered the 
business worse. Instead of simplicity, his explanations possessed the 
most perplexing abstruseness. He made, besides, no allowance for dis- 
relish or inexperience, but, judging of others by his own practised 
habits, imagined that every student must necessarily burst forth at once, 
like Minerva from the brain of Jupiter, a full-grown, full-fledged 
mathematician. The consequence of this was obvious. I began speedily 
to entertain a dislike to science—to fancy that I was one of those born — 
with what Horace calls a “ crassa Minerva,” and that all the prognostics — 
which my friends had been pleased to entertain respecting my success at _ 
Cambridge, would, from the single circumstance of the University 
honours being restricted, if not exclusively, at least in most cases, to — 
mathematics, be at once and for ever blighted. This for a time threw an 
intolerable damp on my spirits. I could not but feel that, as a mathe- — 
matician, I was the most promising blockhead in my college ;. that — 
I was eyed with pity by some, and with contempt by others. — 
Strongly acted on by these possibly over-sensitive opinions, I began 
gradually to withdraw more and more into myself, and, in my intervals” 
of study, to confine myself exclusively to the classics. In this state 
mind I was found by an old schoolfellow, named P. t, a friend, whose 
intimacy had been for years my chief delight at Reading.—A word here 
upon those very agreeable delusions, school friendships. Though 
apparently bottomed on durable foundations, they are the mere creatures — 
of impulse, hollow and illusory, short-lived and fantastic, glow-worm 
