HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT. 
xix 
teentli year, lie was entered at Eton, where his happy 
powers of analysis, or of synthesis, astonished all the pro¬ 
fessors. He made such remarkable progress that in 1825 
his father sent him to Cains College, Cambridge, and in 
the class of 1829-’30 he graduated thence. 
While at Cambridge the society of the youthful Her¬ 
bert was eagerly sought after by more wealthy young 
commoners; and, as he was equally anxious to associate 
with them, he gradually formed some very expensive 
habits. In books and in clothing, boating, racing, tandem 
drives, etc., he scattered money extravagantly; but there 
are always very kind old gentlemen, around colleges 
especially, who know a young man’s pedigree and con¬ 
nections as well, if not better, than he does himself, and 
who have a particular regard for lending money to young 
gentlemen with large expectations themselves or parents 
able to pay up all forfeits. One of the best things Her¬ 
bert did while at Cambridge was to join a troop of Cam¬ 
bridgeshire Yeomanry Cavalry, a full squadron of which 
was occasionally “ camped out ” on the routes between 
Cambridge and Huntingdon, Peterborough, Lynn, Nor¬ 
wich, and sometimes as far north as Boston in Lincoln¬ 
shire, as the different counties might invite each other’s 
members, generally freeholders of the county, but always 
wfilling to receive recruits from among the collegians. 
By the knowledge of equestrian and field movements thus 
acquired, Herbert was subsequently enabled to give us 
those fine descriptions of Roman battles, sieges, and cam¬ 
paigns (by the way, the historian Gibbon has made use 
of a similar advantage in early education among his 
works), which Herbert’s delighted readers find in “ The 
Captains of the Old World,” or in “The Koman Repub¬ 
lic,” and wdiich he intended to have continued. Much 
of the supposed hauteur of Herbert’s manner arose from 
the fact that his mind was so frequently “ pre-occupied ” 
2 
VOL. i. 
