Lehrjalire and Wanderjalire 



171 



third, Boulton, from tiiiding that lie could not continue reading as he used to do without 

 risking it. Fowell Buxton is quite knocked up and goes out in the poll, so does Bristed 

 one of the first classics in our year, in fact the whole of Ti'inity is crank. Two other 

 men Hotham and Edwards who read with Hopkins and at the same time were very 

 superior classics (Hotham was Newcastle scholar at Eton, which is the highest classical 

 honour they can get there) have both given up classics finding their two subjects are too 

 much for them. It is quite melancholy too to see the men who stood high in the College, 

 but did not get scholarships this year in May; they seem most of them quite broken 

 spirited. Our man Stokes who was considered sure of being Senior Classic of his year, 

 who used to be the merriest fellow going, lost his scholarship from not doing his Mathe- 

 matics, he scarcely ever perpetrates a laugh and so also with the other men. Johnson also 

 (Adele knows Mrs Johnson) is quite cut up. Joe Kay has left from illness produced by 

 reading and won't come back till ne.xt term. I feel more convinced every day that if 

 there is a thing more to be repressed than another it is certainly the system of com- 

 petition for the satisfaction enjoyed by the gainers is very far from counterbalancing the 

 pain it produces among the others'. 



I have not after all entered a boat club but patronise hockey and made my first 

 debut yesterday at it. Montague Boidton is a very nice fellow and uncommonly sharp, 

 I do not know what his chance is considered to be in Honours. Charley Buxton's and 

 my debating club gets on famously. We have just enrolled Hallam- (the youngest and 



' To go out in the Poll was according to Bristed i^Five Years in an English 

 University (1840 — 5), 3rd ed. p. 216) the cour.se which many a man took at that date 

 out of pride when from early idleness, ill health or other cause his degree would not be 

 equal to what he thought his abilities deserved. Of the men mentioned Hotham must have 

 finally taken a poll degree, but he was elected to a Trinity fellowship in 184.5; Edwards 

 was a very low wrangler; Stokes did not graduate at all or took a poll; Charles Astor 

 Bristed was an American, he is referred to in the Memories, p. 77, and was a great friend 

 of Henry Hallam. He gave an obituary notice of Hallam in the New York Literary 

 World, which is cited by Maine and Lushington and carries us back into the circle of 

 the "Historical." — "He was the neatest extempore speaker I ever heard; his unprepared 

 remarks were more precisely and elegantly worded than most men's elaborate written 

 compositions. He had too a foresight and power of anticipation unconnnon in such a 

 youth, which enabled him to leave no salient points of attack and made his arguments 

 very difficult to answer. He was always most liberal in his concessions to the other side 

 and never committed the fault of claiming too much or proving too much. His was not 

 a passionate oratory that carried his hearers away in a whirlwind, but a winning voice 

 that stole away their hearts, the ars celare artem, the perfection of persuasiveness." — These 

 lines are a striking testimonial to the powers of Hallam, but also indicate the nature of 

 Galton's personal circle. Bristed was next but one to " wooden spoon " in the mathematical 

 and second in the second class of the Classical Tripos in 1845. I have already referred 

 to Fowell Buxton and the Kays. 



' This is the "Historical Society," and we may fairly assume it was founded by 

 Galton and Buxton. In the Memoir of Henry Fitzmauriee Hallam by Henry Sumner 

 Maine and Franklin Lushington, which is published in the Remains in Verse and Prose 

 of Arthur Henry Hallam (new ed. 1862, p. lii), it is said of Henry Hallam: "In the 

 first year of his College-life he became the virtual founder of the 'Historical' debating 



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