For the first time since I first entered college did I now visit my relations; so eagerly and assiduously had I been prosecuting my studies in the University. Without entering into the particulars of this visit, which would prove interesting to none but my particular friends, I shall merely state, that after a short sojourn amongst them, of much less duration than the long vacation, finding myself in a country village 130 miles from London and not much less from Cambridge, decidedly out of my element, I was all impatient once more to resume my proper station within the sacred walls of Trinity. Taking a circuit, therefore, of a few hundred miles, just to receive the gratulations of a few well-wishers scattered abroad on one side or the other of the road to London, I passed through that emporium of the world, on my route to Oxford, and thence, after remaining a few days with a friend of Lincoln-College, who chanced not to be “gone down,” came round by the “Pluck-coach” (so called because the plucked men of Cambridge used to go by it, to seek better luck at Oxford) to Cambridge.

Once more I soon found myself in my snug and ever-delectable retirement in the Cloisters, surrounded on every side by prospects most agreeable to the intellectual eye, a profusion of the greatest authors upon every subject that suited my own taste or fancy.