My father sent me to pay a visit to my uncle, by way of keeping the old gentleman in mind of me.  I was received, as usual, without any expression of discontent; which we always considered equivalent to a hearty welcome.  Whether he had ever heard of my strolling freak or not I could not discover; he and his man were both so taciturn.  I spent a day or two roaming about the dreary mansion and neglected park; and felt at one time, I believe, a touch of poetry, for I was tempted to drown myself in a fish-pond; I rebuked the evil spirit, however, and it left me.  I found the same red-headed boy running wild about the park, but I felt in no humor to hunt him at present.  On the contrary, I tried to coax him to me, and to make friends with him, but the young savage was untameable.

When I returned from my uncle’s I remained at home for some time, for my father was disposed, he said, to make a man of me.  He took me out hunting with him, and I became a great favorite of the red-nosed squire, because I rode at everything; never refused the boldest leap, and was always sure to be in at the death.  I used often however, to offend my father at hunting dinners, by taking the wrong side in politics.  My father was amazingly ignorant—­so ignorant, in fact, as not to know that he knew nothing.  He was staunch, however, to church and king, and full of old-fashioned prejudices.  Now, I had picked up a little knowledge in politics and religion, during my rambles with the strollers, and found myself capable of setting him right as to many of his antiquated notions.  I felt it my duty to do so; we were apt, therefore, to differ occasionally in the political discussions that sometimes arose at these hunting dinners.

I was at that age when a man knows least and is most vain of his knowledge; and when he is extremely tenacious in defending his opinion upon subjects about which he knows nothing.  My father was a hard man for any one to argue with, for he never knew when he was refuted.  I sometimes posed him a little, but then he had one argument that always settled the question; he would threaten to knock me down.  I believe he at last grew tired of me, because I both out-talked and outrode him.  The red-nosed squire, too, got out of conceit of me, because in the heat of the chase, I rode over him one day as he and his horse lay sprawling in the dirt.  My father, therefore, thought it high time to send me to college; and accordingly to Trinity College at Oxford was I sent.

I had lost my habits of study while at home; and I was not likely to find them again at college.  I found that study was not the fashion at college, and that a lad of spirit only ate his terms; and grew wise by dint of knife and fork.  I was always prone to follow the fashions of the company into which I fell; so I threw by my books, and became a man of spirit.  As my father made me a tolerable allowance, notwithstanding the narrowness of his income, having an eye always to my great expectations, I was enabled