NATHANIEL LAWRENCE AUSTEN. xxiii 



ments for study and amusement, as all know, form 

 the two grand divisions of university time. As re- 

 gards his studies, T may say that in a sense Austen 

 was always studying, for the commonest weed or 

 the humblest insect was to him a study and a joy. 

 Nature was the book he loved to read, and right 

 diligently did he devote himself to the perusal of 

 her exhaustless pages. With such a passion and 

 absorbing love for the study of natural science, 

 can it be wondered that the study of the ordinary, 

 but none the less necessary, subjects prescribed as 

 preliminary to every degree, should have proved 

 somewhat irksome and distasteful to him. The 

 study of nature was a pleasure, nay, more almost a 

 necessity ; the acquisition of Greek, Latin, and 

 mathematics a labour and a toil. And so it 

 was that many and many an hour which some 

 of us believed, or at least hoped, was being spent 

 in getting up necessary routine work, was after all 

 devoted to the study that he loved, and in which 

 he so much excelled. To this tendency to post- 

 pone such distasteful tasks a temptation was never 

 wanting for my poor friend's rooms overlooked the 

 college grove and gardens, a situation for observing 

 nature such as but few college rooms afford. In 

 the grove was confined a small herd of deer ; need 

 I say that they were objects of interest to Austen, 

 whose liberality, if not his voice, was well known to 



