so looked forward to disporting myself in,
has the trail of the Serpent over it all."

After a few terms, however, I was raised from
my dejection and reinstated in my own good
opinion by being made one of the mathematical
lecturers. The owner of the voice before
alluded to was passed over, so that his talented
friend experienced, not unnaturally, a double
satisfaction. Nevertheless, the appointment
had its dark side; the primary harangues of a
nervous mathematician, who lisps, are as trying
to himself as to an audience, very many of
which come to scoff and remain for the same
purpose. I had prepared a preface at first
somewhat humorous, as is the usual custom,
but they missed all the points through a
mistaken notion of respect, and reserved
their risibility for the serious part of my
subject. I persuaded the college to procure
a quantity of models, in order to interest the
class with practical illustrations in statics,
but my scientific fantoccini refused to act.
When I had my system of pulleys quite
complete, with the ratios satisfactorily explained,
the one that should have got up quickest
stayed where he was, and the pulley whom
all the laws of motion and sense of gravity
ought to have restrained, ran up like a rocket.
I got on very well with my class, in time, with
the exception of two young gentlemen who
were habitually absent from it, and whom,
being Spangles, I was anxious to retain in my
lecture-room, as sunshine in that shady place.
I presented my compliments to them, therefore,
in the usual form, and requested their
attendance at my rooms on the ensuing
morning. It happened to be a saint's day,
on which there is no lecture, and I took my
horizontal refreshment so much later than
usual that the youths were in my reception-
room before I was out of bed. The Gyp,
with admirable sagacity, informed them that
Mr. Jones would soon be in, adding, with
reprehensible inaccuracy, "from his morning
walk after chapel." There was another
door by which I could make my exit and
enter from the stairs, but in the meantime,
while getting up, I had to listen to the
young men's conversation.

"Chapel! " said one, " think of Sinner
Jones going to chapel!"

"Why sinner? " said the other. (Ah, why
indeed?)

"O, don't you know? " resumed the first;
"why, one of the Deans was rather hard
upon the men a year or two ago, and kept
them very strict to their chapels; so some
undergraduates, in revenge, took account of
how the Fellows conducted themselves in
that way, pricking their names down vith
great accuracy when they attended, and
animadverting on them in print, at each week's
end, in the form of regular notices, when
they shirked; half of them got nominally
gated and fined too by this Society for the
Promotion of Chapel-keeping amongst the
Dons; and, in particular, our friend Jenny
Jones here was severely punished, and received
the appellation of Sinner—in
contradistinction, that was, to the other Jones, who
was very regular; and, besides being called
Saint in his own lifetime, was presented by
the Society with a little mug with an
appropriate device."

"Poor Jenny," said the retailer of this
infamous story, after a pause, " shall you ever
forget him in that lecture of his on optics?
Drawing a very crooked line upon the board,
like this " (here there must have been some
abominable pantomime), " and saying, ' Now
suppose that is a way from the sun'—he
meant a ray, you know; then, having walked
backwards to the end of the lecture-room,
how he exclaimed, ' But it isn't stwaight,' and
so rubbed it all out again."

Amidst a peal of laughter, I walked in,
very red in my cap and gown, as if from an
excursion, and informed them that I did not
require their attendance at my lectures any
longer.

These things are annoying enough, my
sensitive public, but they are nothing to
some other matters which have to be done
and suffered by a Fellow of a college. An
university syndicate three times a-week, for
instance, is much less like a crumpled rose-leaf
than a very considerable thorn; continual
attendance at the senate-house or on the vice-
chancellor, and the repeating everlasting
Latin oaths about the Fitzwilliam Museum,
even if one does know how to accent
Academiæ, is not refreshing. I am not one of
those masters of arts who are desirous of
melting the silver pokers, and of keeping a
sort of Baron Nathan at half-a-crown a-day
to conduct our most imposing ceremonials;
but I do think there's a little too much of
the " slow music, lights half down " about
them, too.

The incurring of the hatred of a score of your
fellow-creatures, and the hostility of hundreds,
by becoming an university examiner, is scarcely
made up to one by twenty pounds; far less
are the letters from Investigator, in the
Radical organ, which dilate for weeks to
come upon the singularity of no nobleman
having ever been plucked by Mr. Jones. It
is not such fun, as undergraduates think, to
have to walk the streets on a wet night, like
an animated curfew, extinguishing cigars and
pipes, with a couple of human dogs at heel;
sometimes the accused party is off like a hare,
and the proctor and his little pack have to
pursue his devious course for many minutes
before they can come up with him; the
chace is then found to be intoxicated, and
refusing to show his colours and reveal his
name and college, is led half over the
university to be identified by the several gate-
keepers, without success; finally, perhaps,
he turns out to be a hair-cutter of
revolutionary opinions, and we have to compound
an action for false imprisonment by paying
him our whole proctorial income. We have