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extreme hard labor, and gained at the risk and hazard of my health by a perseverance in so severe a course of study, as brought me ultimately to the very brink of the grave.

Four times I went through these scholastic exercises in the course of the year, keeping two acts and as many first opponencies. In one of the latter, where I was pitched against an ingenious student of my own college, I contrived to form certain arguments, which by a scale of deductions so artfully drawn, and involving consequences which, by mathematical gradations (the premises being once granted), led to such unforeseen confutation, that even my tutor, Mr. Backhouse, to whom I previously imparted them, was effectually trapped, and could as little parry them as the gentleman who kept the act, or the Moderator who filled the chair.

The last time I was called upon to keep an act in the schools, I sent in three questions to the Moderator, which he withstood as being all mathematical, and required me to conform to the usage of proposing one metaphysical question in the place of that which I should think fit to withdraw. This was ground I never liked to take, and I appealed against his requisition; the act was accordingly put by till the matter of right should be ascertained by the statutes of the university, and in the result of that inquiry it was given for me, and my questions stood. This litigation between the Moderator and an under-graduate, whose interest in the distribution of honors at the ensuing de gree lay so much at the mercy of his report, made a considerable stir, and gave rise to much conversation; so that when this long-suspended act took place, not only the floor of the schools was filled with the juniors, but many of high standing in the university assembled in the gallery. The Moderator had nominated the same gentleman as my first opponent, who no doubt felt every motive to renew the contest, and bring me to a proper sense of my presumption. The term was now drawing near to its close, and I began to feel very sensibly the effects of my too intense application, my whole frame being debilitated in a manner that warned me I had not long to continue my course of labor without the interruption of some serious attack; I had in fact the seeds of a rheumatic fever lurking in my constitution, and was led between two of my friends and fellow collegians to the schools in a very feeble state. I was, however, intellectually alive to all the purposes of the business we were upon, and when I observed that the Moderator exhibited symptoms of indisposition by resting his head upon the cushion on the desk, I cut short my thesis to make way for my opponent, who had hardly brought his argument to bear, when the Moderator, on

the plea of sudden indisposition, dismissed me with a speech, which, though tinctured with some petulance, had more of praise in it than I expected to receive.

I yielded now to advice, and paid attention to my health, till we were cited to the senate house to be examined for our Bachelor's degree. It was hardly ever my lot during that examination to enjoy any respite. I seemed an object singled out as every man's mark, and was kept perpetually at the table under the process of question and answer. My constitution just held me up to the expiration of the scrutiny, and I immediately hastened to my own home to alarm my parents with my ghastly looks, and soon fell ill of a rheumatic fever, which for the space of six months kept me hovering between life and death. The skill of my physician, the afore-mentioned Dr. Wallis, of Stamford, and the tender attention of the dear friends about me, rescued me at length, and I recovered under their care. Whilst I was in this state, I had the pleasure of hearing from Cambridge of the high station which had been adjudged to me amongst 'The Wranglers' of my year, and I further understood how much I was indebted to the generous support of that very Moderator, whom I had thwarted in the matter of my questions, for this adjudication so much in my favor and perhaps above my merits, for my knowledge had been hastily attained; a conduct so candid on the part of the Reverend Mr. Ray (fellow of Corpus Christi, and the Moderator, of whom I have been speaking) was ever remembered by me with gratitude and respect: Mr. Ray was afterwards domestic chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and, when I was resident in town, I waited upon him at Lambeth palace to express my sensibility of the very liberal manner in which he had protected me.

I now found myself in a station of ease and credit in my native college, to which I was attached by every tie that could endear it to me. I had changed my under-graduate's gown, and obtained my degree of Bachelor of Arts with honors hardly earned by pains the more severe because so long postponed: and now, if I have been seemingly too elaborate in tracing my own particular progress through these exercises, to which the candidate for a degree at Cambridge must of necessity conform, it is not merely because I can quote my privilege for my excuse, but because I would most earnestly impress upon the attention of my reader the extreme usefulness of these academical exercises and the studies appertaining to them, by which I consider all the purposes of an university education are completed; and so convinced am I of this, that I can hardly allow myself to call that an education, of which they do not make a part; if there

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fore I am to speak for the discipline of the schools, ought I not first to show that I am speaking from experience, without which opinions pass for nothing? Having therefore first demonstrated what my experience of that discipline has been, I have the authority of that, as far as it goes, for an opinion in its favor, which every observation of my life has since contributed to establish and confirm. What more can any system of education hold out to those, who are the objects of it, than public honors to distinguish merit, public exercises to awaken emulation, and public examinations, which cannot be passed without extorting some exertion even from the indolent, nor can be avoided without a marked disgrace to the compounder? Now if I have any knowledge of the world, any insight into the minds and characters of those whom I have had opportunities of knowing (and few have lived more and longer amongst mankind), all my observations tend to convince me that there is no profession, no art, no station nor condition in life, to which the studies I have been speaking of will not apply and come in aid with profit and advantage. That mode of investigation step by step, which crowns the process of the student by the demonstration and discovery of positive and mathematical truth, must of necessity so exercise and train him in the habits of following up his subject, be it what it may, and working out his proofs, as cannot fail to find their uses, whether he who has them dictates from the pulpit, argues at the bar, or declaims in the senate; nay, there is no lot, no station (I repeat it with confidence), be it either social or sequestered, conspicuous or obscure, professional or idly independent, in which the man, once exercised in these studies, though he shall afterwards neglect them, will not to his comfort experience some mental powers and resources, in which their influence shall be felt, though the channels that conducted it may from disuse have become obscure, and no longer to be traced.

Hear the crude opinions, that are let loose upon society in our table conversations: mark the wild and wandering arguments that are launched at random without ever hitting the mark they should be levelled at; what does all this noise and nonsense prove, but that the talker has indeed acquired the fluency of words, but never known the exercise of thought, or attended to the development of a single proposition? Tell him that he ought to hear what may be said on the other side of the question-he agrees to it, and either begs leave to wind up with a few words more, which he winds and wire-draws without end; or, having paused to hear, hears with impatience a very little, foreknows everything you had further to say, cuts short your

argument and bolts in upon you-with an answer to that argument-? No; with a continuation of his own gabble, and, having stifled you with the torrent of his trash, places your contempt to the credit of his own capacity, and foolishly conceives he talks with reason because he has not patience to attend to any reasoning but his own.

What are all the quirks and quibbles, that skirmishers in controversy catch hold of to escape the point of any argument, when pressed upon them? If a laugh, a jeer, a hit of mimicry, or buffoonery cannot parry the attack, they find themselves disarmed of the only weapons they can wield, and then, though truth should stare them in the face, they will affect not to see it: instead of receiving conviction as the acquirement of something, which they had not themselves, and have gained from you, they regard it as an insult to their understandings, and grow sullen and resentful; they will then tell you they shall leave you to your own opinions, they shall say no more, and with an air of importance wrap themselves up in a kind of contemptuous indifference, when their reason for saying nothing is only because they have nothing more to say. How many of this cast of character are to be met with in the world every man of the world can witness.

There are also others, whose vivacity of imagination having never felt the trammels of a syllogism is for ever flying off into - digression and display

Quo teneam nodo mutantem Protea formas ?—

To attempt at hedging in these cuckoos is but lost labor. These gentlemen are very entertaining as long as novelties with no meaning can entertain you; they have a great variety of opinions, which, if you oppose, they do not defend, and if you agree with, they desert. Their talk is like the wild notes of birds, amongst which you shall distinguish some of pleasant tone, but out of which you compose no tune or harmony of song. These men would have set down Archimedes for a fool when he danced for joy at the solution of a proposition, and mistaken Newton for a madman, when in the surplice, which he put on for chapel over night, he was found the next morning in the same place and posture fixed in profound meditation on his theory of the prismatic colors. So great is their distaste for demonstration, they think no truth is worth the waiting for; the mountain must come to them, they are not by half so complaisant as Mahomet. They are not easily reconciled to truisms, but have no particular objection to impossibilities. For argument they have no ear; it does not touch them; it fetters fancy, and dulls the edge of re

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partee; if by chance they find themselves in an untenable position, and wit is not at hand to help them out of it, they will take up with a pun, and ride home upon a horse laugh: if they can't keep their ground, they won't wait to be attacked and driven out of it. Whilst a reasoning man will be picking his way out of a dilemma, they, who never reason at all, jump over it, and land themselves at once upon new ground, where they take an imposing attitude, and escape pursuit. Whatever these men do, whether they talk, or write, or act, it is without deliberation, without consistency, without plan. Having no expanse of mind, they can comprehend only in part; they will promise an epic poem, and produce an epigram: In short, they glitter, pass away, and are forgotten; their outset makes a show of mighty things; they stray out of their course into by-ways and obliquities, and when out of sight of their contemporaries, are forever lost to posterity.

When characters of this sort come under our observation, it is easy to discover that their levities and frivolities have their source in the errors and defects of education, for it is evident they have not been trained in any principles of right reasoning. Therefore it is that I hold in such esteem the academical studies pursued at Cambridge, and regard their exercises in the mathematical schools, and their examinations in the theatre, as forming the best system, which this country offers, for the education of its youth. Persuaded as I am of this, I must confess I have ever considered the election of scholars from the college of Eton to that of King's in Cambridge, as a bar greatly in their disfavor, forasmuch as by the constitution of that college they are not subjected to the same process for attaining their degrees, and of course the study of the mathematics makes no part of their system, but is merely optional. I leave this remark to those who may think it worthy of their consideration. Under-graduates of Trinity College, whether elected from Westminster or not, have no such exemptions.

Having now, at an age more than commonly early, obtained my Bachelor's degree, with the return of health I resumed my studies, and without neglecting those I had so lately been engaged in, again took up those authors who had lain by untouched for a whole twelvemonth. I supposed my line in life was decided for the church, the profession of my ancestors, and in the course of three years I had good reason to expect a fellowship with the degree of Master of Arts. These views, so suited to my natural disposition, were now before me, and I dwelt upon them with entire content.

Having now been in the habit of reading upon system, I re