nd tastes
differ. Nor do I think the morality of Horace or Aristophanes, or the
theology of Lucretius, so peculiarly admirable, as to render them, _per
se_, fitter subjects for the exclusive exercise of a young man's
faculties than "the Pickwick Papers," or "The Rod and the Gun." I have
heard--(I never saw, nor will I believe it)--of the profanity of certain
sporting under-graduates, who took into chapel the racing calendar,
bound in red morocco, instead of a prayer-book; I hold it to have been
the malicious fiction of some would-be university reformer; but, even if
true, I am not sure that I much prefer that provident piety which I have
noticed getting up its Greek within the same walls by means of a
Septuagint and Greek liturgy. Religion is one thing, classical learning
another, and sporting information another; all totally distinct, and
totally different: the first immeasurably above the other two, but
standing equidistant from both. It does not make a man one whit the
better to know that Coraebus won the cup at Olympia B.C. 776, than it
does to know that Priam did _not_ win the St Leger at Doncaster A.D.
1830; from all I can make out, the Greeks on the turf at present are not
much worse than their old namesakes; I dare say there was a fair amount
of black-legism on both occasions. Men injure their moral and physical
health by reading as much as by other things; it takes quite as much out
of a man, and puts as little in him to any good purpose, to get up his
logic as to pull in an eight-oar.

Besides, if one is to read and enter into the spirit of a dozen
different authors, one dull monotonous round of physical existence seems
ill fitted to call out the requisite variety of mental powers. I hold
that there are divers and sundry fit times, and places, and states of
mind, suited to different lines of reading. If a man is at work upon
history, by all means let him sport oak rigidly against all visitors;
let him pile up his authorities and references on every vacant chair all
round him, and get a clear notion of it by five or six hours'
uninterrupted and careful study. Or, if he has a system of philosophy to
get up, let him sit down with his head cool, his window open, (not the
one looking into quad.,) let him banish from his mind all minor matters,
and not break off in the chain of argument so long as he can keep his
brain clear and his eyes open. Even then, a good gallop afterwards, or a
cigar and a glass of punch, wit