Tales from Many Sources / Vol. V

f the younger members of that learned university into distant and retired parts of her Majesty's domini

Reading" out of the question, three fine summer months might be worse spent, than in climbing the mountains, and whipping the trout-streams, of that romantic land. Many a quiet sea-side town, or picturesque fishing-village, might be mentioned, which owes no little of its summer gaiety, and perhaps something of its prosperity, to the annual visit of "the Oxonians:" many a fair girl has been indebted for the most piquant flirtation of the season to the "gens togata," who were reading at the little watering

to put the finishing-touch to my education, by joining a party who were going down to Glyndewi, in --shire, "really to read." In an unguarded moment I consented; packed up books enough to last me for five years, re

l water-drinker and union-debater from Baliol, and a two-bottle man from Christ Church. When we first met, it was like oil and water; it seemed as if we might be churned

and families, as they have an undeniable right to do-but not the public. I looked at the first speaker; at his pea-jacket, that is, which was all I could see of him: Oxford decidedly. His cigar was Oxford too, by the villanous smell of it. He took the coachman's implied distrust of his professional experience good-humouredly enough, proffered him his cigar-case, and entered into a discussion on the near leader's moral and physical qualities. "I'll trouble you for a light, if you please," said I. He turned round, we stuck the ends of our cigars together, and puffed into each other's faces for about a minute (my cigars were dampish), as grave as North American Indians. "Thank you," said I, as the interesting ceremony was concluded, and our acquaintance begun. We got into conversation, when it appeared that he too was bound for the undiscovered shores of

ea-coated friend with in the place of his Oxford "Havannahs;" a short cough occasionally, as though the smoke of the said weed were not altogether "the perfume of the lips he loved;" and a resolute taciturnity. What was he? It is a lamentable fact, that an Oxford undergraduate does not invariably look the gentleman. He vibrates between the fashionable assurance of a London swindler and the modest diffidence of an overgrown schoolboy. There is usually a degree of unfinishedness about him. He seems to be assuming a character: unlike the glorious Burschenschaft of Germany, he has no character of his own. However, for want of more profitable occupation, we set to work in earnest to discover who our fellow-traveller really was; and by a series of somewhat American conversational inquiries, we at last fished out that he was going into --shire, like ourselves-nay, in answer to a direct question on the

inion-when I awoke from the comfortable nap into which I had fallen since the last change of horses. For some time we alternately dozed, tum

Hall man, with a duplicate name: Mr Sydney Dawson, as the cards on his multifarious luggage set forth: that he was an aspirant for "anything he could get" in the way of honours (humble aspiration as it seemed, it was not destined to be gratified, for he got nothing). He thought he might find som

could speak such undeniable English was in himself a treasure; for an ineffectual attempt at a bargain for some lobsters (even with a "Welsh interpreter" in our hands) had warned us that there were in this Christian country unknown tongues which would have puzzled even the Rev. Edward Irving. So the bargain was struck: in half an hour ourselves and traps were alongside the boat: and

asy matter to substitute a sounder one. In what did the superiority of Mrs Jenkins's smoky parlour at Glyndewi consist, for the purposes of reading for a degree, compared with my pleasant rooms looking into -- gardens at Oxford, or the governor's snug library at home? It is an abstruse question. Parents and guardians, indeed, whose part upon the stage of life, as upon the theatrical stage, consists principally in submitting to be more or less humbugged, attribute surprising effects to a fancied absence of all amusements, with a mill-horse round of Greek, Latin, and logic, early rising, and walks in the country with a pocket Horace. From my own experience of reading parties, I should select as their peculiar characteristics a tendency to hats and caps of such remarkable shapes as, if once sported in the college

, and the rats consequently lived in them rent-free for six months, it was but fair somebody should pay: and we did. "Attendance" we had into the bargain. Now, attendance at a lodging-house has been defined to be, the privilege of ringing your bell as often as you please, provided you do not expect a

seemed to have monopolised the dirt of the whole establishment. College bedrooms are not luxurious affairs, so we were not inclined to b

ts-one parallel to the quay (or, as the more refined call it, "the terrace"), and the other at right angles to it. The first was Herring Street-the second Goose Street. At least such were the ancient names, which I give for the benefit of antiquarian readers. Since the then Princess Victoria visited B--, the loyalty of the Glyndewi people had changed "Herring" into "Victoria;"

vain attempt to rival its majestic neighbour. At one end stood a large hotel with a small business, and an empty billiard-room; at the other, a wall six inches high marked the spot where subscription-rooms were to be built for the accommodation of visitors and the public generally, as set forth in the prospec

mptations," indeed! there were no temptations-the only temptation I felt there was to hang or drown myself, and there was not a tree six feet high within as many miles, and the Dewi was a river "darkly, deeply, beautifully"-muddy; it would have been smothering rather. We should not have staid to the end of the first month, had it not been for very shame; but to run away from a reading-party would have been a joke against us for ever. So from the time we got up in the morning, until we climbed Mrs Jenkins's domestic tread-mill again at night, the one question was, what should we do with ourselves? Walk? there were the A-- and B-- roads-three miles of sand and dust either way. Before us was the bay-behind the --shire mountains, up which one might walk some sixteen miles (in the month of July), and get the same view from each succ

eon. Unfortunately, from the very first, Willingham and myself were set down by Hanmer as the idle men of the party; this sort of prophetical discrimination, which tutors at Oxford are very much in the habit of priding themselves upon, tends, like other prophecies, to work its own fulfilment. Did a civil Welshman favour us with a call? "Show him in to Mr Hawthorne and Mr Willingham; I dare say they are not very busy"-quoth our Jupiter tonans from on high in the dining-room, where he held his court; and accordingly in he came. We had Stilton and bottled por

d him in the opinion he had always expressed of their utter want of civilisation (for, as he justly remarked, not one in a dozen could even speak decent English), h

keeping a pretty yacht, had given us a dinner-party or two, and a pleasant day's sail. Capital fellows were the young Phillipses: Nature's gentlemen; unsophisticated, hearty Welshmen; lads from sixteen to twenty. Down they used to come in a most dangerous little craft of their own, wh

B--; to get anything in Glyndewi, beyond the native luxuries of bacon and herrings, was hopeless; and our dinner happened to be a leash of fowls, of which we had just purchased a live supply. Mrs Glasse would have

of the Glyndewi regatta!-that