xt evening, two hampers,
containing, as our purveyor assured us, "very prime 'uns," arrived at my
rooms "from Mr S----, the wine merchant;" and by daylight on the
following morning were judiciously distributed throughout all the
comeatable premises within the college walls. When I awoke the next
morning, I heard voices in earnest conversation under my window, and
looked out with no little curiosity. The frogs had evidently produced a
sensation. The bursar, disturbed apparently from his early breakfast,
stood robed in an ancient dressing-gown, with the _Times_ in his hand,
on which he was balancing a frog as yellow as himself. The dean, in cap
and surplice, on his way from chapel, was eagerly listening to the
account which one of the scouts was giving him of the first discovery of
the intruders.

"Me and my missis, sir," quoth John, "was a-coming into college when it
was hardly to say daylight, when she, as I reckon, sets foot upon one of
'em, and was like to have been back'ards with a set of breakfast chiney,
as she was a-bringing in for one of the fresh gentlemen. She scritches
out, in course, and I looks down, and then I sees two or three a-'oppin
about; but I didn't take much notice till I gets to the thoroughfare,
when there was a whole row on 'em a-trying to climb up the bottom step;
and then I calls Solomon the porter, and"----

Here I left my window, and, making a hasty toilet, joined a group of
undergraduates, who were now collecting round the dean and bursar. I
cast my eyes round the quadrangle, and was delighted with the success of
our labours. There had been a heavy shower in the night, and the frogs
were as lively as they could be on so ungenial a location as a gravelled
court. In every corner was a goodly cluster, who were making ladders of
each other's backs, as if determined to scale the college walls. Some,
of more retiring disposition, were endeavouring to force themselves into
crevices, and hiding their heads behind projections to escape the gaze
of academic eyes; while a few active spirits seemed to be hopping a
sweepstakes right for the common-room door. Just as I made my
appearance, the Principal came out of the door of his lodgings, with
another of the fellows, having evidently been summoned to assist at the
consultation. Good old soul! his study of zoology had been chiefly
confined to the class edibles, and a shower of frogs, authenticated upon
the oaths of the whole Convocation, would not have b