106 CAMBRIDGE. [Ch. V. 



from a shot it had received on the previous day ; and that it 

 had made and left such a painful impression on his mind, 

 that ho could not reconcile it to his conscience 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." t 



His old college friends agree in speaking with affectionate 

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

 what they have been able to tell me, I gain the impression of 

 a young man overflowing with animal spirits — 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, en- 

 gravings at the Fitzwilliam Museum, 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 

 mo to secure a prize — the usual result, on his examining the 

 contents of my bottle, being an exclamation, ' Well, old 

 Cherbury ' { (the nickname he gave me, and by which he 

 usually addressed me), * none of these will do.' " Again, the 

 Kev. 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 

 between Cambridge and Grantchester, and speaks of a certain 

 beetle the remembrance of whose name is " Crux major." § 



* Autobiography p. 10. 



f From a letter to W. D. Fox. 



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



§ Panagxus crux-major. 



