us to observation in the blue clothes, because I would not
thread the alleys and blind ways of the town with him to elude notice,
when we have been out together on a holiday in the streets of this
sneering and prying metropolis. W---- went, sore with these notions,
to Oxford, where the dignity and sweetness of a scholar's life,
meeting with the alloy of a humble introduction, wrought in him a
passionate devotion to the place, with a profound aversion from the
society. The servitor's gown (worse than his school array) clung to
him with Nessian venom. He thought himself ridiculous in a garb, under
which Latimer must have walked erect; and in which Hooker, in his
young days, possibly flaunted in a vein of no discommendable vanity.
In the depth of college shades, or in his lonely chamber, the poor
student shrunk from observation. He found shelter among books, which
insult not; and studies, that ask no questions of a youth's finances.
He was lord of his library, and seldom cared for looking out beyond
his domains. The healing influence of studious pursuits was upon him,
to soothe and to abstract. He was almost a healthy man; when the
waywardness of his fate broke out against him with a second and worse
malignity. The father of W---- had hitherto exercised the humble
profession of house-painter at N----, near Oxford. A supposed interest
with some of the heads of the colleges had now induced him to take
up his abode in that city, with the hope of being employed upon some
public works which were talked of. From that moment I read in the
countenance of the young man, the determination which at length tore
him from academical pursuits for ever. To a person unacquainted with
our Universities, the distance between the gownsmen and the townsmen,
as they are called--the trading part of the latter especially--is
carried to an excess that would appear harsh and incredible. The
temperament of W----'s father was diametrically the reverse of his
own. Old W---- was a little, busy, cringing tradesman, who, with his
son upon his arm, would stand bowing and scraping, cap in hand, to
any-thing that wore the semblance of a gown--insensible to the winks
and opener remonstrances of the young man, to whose chamber-fellow, or
equal in standing, perhaps, he was thus obsequiously and gratuitously
ducking. Such a state of things could not last. W---- must change
the air of Oxford or be suffocated. He chose the former; and let the
sturdy moralist, who s