THE ORPHAN MAID. 55 



tobacco smoke) when smoking commenced, after supper; and a 

 strange appearance we made in them ! 



" His pedestrian feats were marvellous. On one occasion, hav- 

 ing been absent a day or two, we asked him, on his return to the 

 common room, where he had been ? He said, in London. When 

 did you return ? This morning. How did you come ? On foot. 

 As we all expressed surprise, he said : ' Why, the fact is, I dined 

 yesterday with a friend in Grosvenor (I think it was) Square, and 

 as I quitted the house, a fellow who was passing was impertinent 

 and insulted me, upon which I knocked him down; and as I did 

 not choose to have myself called in question for a street row, I at 

 once started, as I was, in my dinner dress, and never stopped until 

 I got to the College gate this morning, as it was being opened.' 

 Now this was a walk of fifty-eight miles at least, which he must 

 have got over in eight or nine hours at most, supposing him to 

 have left the dinner-party at nine in the evening.* 



" He had often spoken to me when at Oxford of a protracted 

 foot-tour which he had made in Ireland some years previous, and 

 about which there appeared to me a sort of mystery, which he did 

 not explain. « R. H. S."f 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE ORPHAN MAID. UNIVERSITY CAREER. 



1803-'08. 



The course of true love, whether calm or troubled, whether issu- 

 ing in sunshine or in storm, is " an old, old story ;" but it is one 

 that sums up the chiefest joys and sorrows of men and women, and 



* Mr. Southwell's statement may seem an exaggeration ; but a reference to Mr. Findlay'a ac- 

 count, at p. 24, will show that my father had easily performed six miles an hour in what I take 

 for granted to be a more difficult mode, of progression than the ordinary, viz., "toe and heel." 



tAs a tail-piece to Mr. Southwell's letter, I take the liberty of inserting here one of Mr. 

 Lockhart's Ilogarthian sketches, containing, I have no doubt, correct if not very flattering por- 

 traits of some of the Oxford dignitaries of that day. The "strictures of the Edinburgh Review," 

 which appear to have excited so much dissatisfaction, were contained in two articles in the R&oi&a 

 of July, 1S09, and of April, 1S10, in which some of the weak points of the contemporary system of 

 education at Oxford were handled with a roughness characteristic of the criticism of that period. 



