to appear to advantage among my fellow-students.  I cultivated all kinds of sports and exercises.  I was one of the most expert oarsmen that rowed on the Isis.  I boxed and fenced.  I was a keen huntsman, and my chambers in college were always decorated with whips of all kinds, spurs, foils, and boxing gloves.  A pair of leather breeches would seem to be throwing one leg out of the half-open drawers, and empty bottles lumbered the bottom of every closet.

I soon grew tired of this, and relapsed into my vein of mere poetical indulgence.  I was charmed with Oxford, for it was full of poetry to me.  I thought I should never grow tired of wandering about its courts and cloisters; and visiting the different college halls.  I used to love to get in places surrounded by the colleges, where all modern buildings were screened from the sight; and to walk about them in twilight, and see the professors and students sweeping along in the dusk in their caps and gowns.  There was complete delusion in the scene.  It seemed to transport me among the edifices and the people of old times.  It was a great luxury, too, for me to attend the evening service in the new college chapel, and to hear the fine organ and the choir swelling an anthem in that solemn building; where painting and music and architecture seem to combine their grandest effects.

I became a loiterer, also, about the Bodleian library, and a great dipper into books; but too idle to follow any course of study or vein of research.  One of my favorite haunts was the beautiful walk, bordered by lofty elms, along the Isis, under the old gray walls of Magdalen College, which goes by the name of Addison’s Walk; and was his resort when a student at the college.  I used to take a volume of poetry in my hand, and stroll up and down this walk for hours.

My father came to see me at college.  He asked me how I came on with my studies; and what kind of hunting there was in the neighborhood.  He examined my sporting apparatus; wanted to know if any of the professors were fox-hunters; and whether they were generally good shots; for he suspected this reading so much was rather hurtful to the sight.  Such was the only person to whom I was responsible for my improvement:  is it matter of wonder, therefore, that I became a confirmed idler?

I do not know how it is, but I cannot be idle long without getting in love.  I became deeply smitten with a shopkeeper’s daughter in the high street; who in fact was the admiration of many of the students.  I wrote several sonnets in praise of her, and spent half of my pocket-money at the shop, in buying articles which I did not want, that I might have an opportunity of speaking to her.  Her father, a severe-looking old gentleman, with bright silver buckles and a crisp, curled wig, kept a strict guard on her; as the fathers generally do upon their daughters in Oxford; and well they may.  I tried to get into his good graces, and to be sociable with him; but in vain.  I said several good things in his shop, but he never laughed; he had no relish for wit and humor.  He was one of those dry old gentlemen who keep youngsters at bay.  He had already brought up two or three daughters, and was experienced in the ways of students.