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Томас де Квинси
The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 1

SKETCH OF PROFESSOR WILSON. ⁴³

[In a Letter to an American Gentleman.]

My dear L,—Among the lions whom you missed by one accident or another on your late travels in Europe, I observe that you recur to none with so much regret as Professor Wilson; you dwell upon this one disappointment as a personal misfortune; and perhaps with reason; for, in the course of my life, I have met with no man of equally varied accomplishments, or, upon the whole, so well entitled to be ranked with that order of men distinguished by brilliant versatility and ambidexterity—of which order we find such eminent models in Alcibiades, in Cæsar, in Crichton, in that of Servan recorded by Sully, and in one or two Italians. Pity that you had not earlier communicated to me the exact route you were bound to, and the particular succession of your engagements when you visited the English Lakes; since, in that case, my interest with Professor Wilson (supposing always that you had declined to rely upon the better passport of your own merits as a naturalist) would have availed for a greater thing than at that time stood between you and the introduction which you coveted. On the day, or the night rather, when you were at Bowness and Ambleside, I happen to know that Professor Wilson's business was one which might have been executed by proxy, though it could not be delayed; and I also know that, apart from the general courtesy of his nature, he would, at all times, have an especial pleasure in waiving a claim of business for one of science or letters, in the person of a foreigner coming from a great distance; and that in no other instance would he make such a sacrifice so cordially as on behalf of an able naturalist. Perhaps you already know from your countryman, Audubon, that the Professor is himself a naturalist, and of original merit; in fact, worth a score of such meagre bookish naturalists as are formed in museums and by second-hand acts of memory; having (like Audubon) built much of his knowledge upon personal observation. Hence he has two great advantages: one, that his knowledge is accurate in a very unusual degree; and another, that this knowledge, having grown up under the inspiration of a real interest and an unaffected love for its objects,—commencing, indeed, at an age when no affectation in matters of that nature could exist,—has settled upon those facts and circumstances which have a true philosophical value: habits, predominant affections, the direction of instincts, and the compensatory processes where these happen to be thwarted,—on all such topics he is learned and full; whilst, on the science of measurements and proportions, applied to dorsal-fins and tail-feathers, and on the exact arrangement of colours, &c.—that petty upholstery of nature, on which books are so tedious and elaborate,—not uncommonly he is negligent or forgetful. What may have served in later years to quicken and stimulate his knowledge in this field, and, at any rate, greatly to extend it, is the conversation of his youngest brother, Mr. James Wilson, who (as you know much better than I) is a naturalist majorum gentium. He, indeed, whilst a boy of not more than sixteen or seventeen, was in correspondence (I believe) with Montague the Ornithologist; and about the same time had skill enough to pick holes in the coat of Mr. Hüber, the German reformer of our then erroneous science of bees.

You see, therefore, that no possible introduction could have stood you more in stead than your own extensive knowledge of transatlantic ornithology. Swammerdam passed his life, it is said, in a ditch. That was a base, earthy solitude,—and a prison. But you and Audubon have passed your lives in the heavenly solitudes of forests and savannahs; and such solitude as this is no prison, but infinite liberty. The knowledge which you have gathered has been answerable to the character of your school: and no sort of knowledge could have secured you a better welcome with Professor Wilson. Yet, had it been otherwise, I repeat that my interest (as I flatter myself) would have opened the gates of Elleray to you even at midnight; for I am so old a friend of Mr. Wilson that I take a pride in supposing myself the oldest; and, barring relations by blood, arrogate the rights of dean in the chapter of his associates: or at least I know of but one person whose title can probably date earlier than mine. About this very month when I am writing, I have known Professor Wilson for a cycle of twenty years and more, which is just half of his life—and also half of mine; for we are almost ad apicem of the same age; Wilson being born in May, and I in August, of the same memorable year.

My introduction to him—setting apart the introducee himself—was memorable from one sole circumstance, viz. the person of the introducer. William Wordsworth it was, who in the vale of Grasmere, if it can interest you to know the place, and in the latter end of 1808, if you can be supposed to care about the time, did me the favour of making me known to John Wilson, or as I might say (upon the Scottish fashion of designating men from their territorial pretensions) to Elleray. I remember the whole scene as circumstantially as if it belonged to but yesterday. In the vale of Grasmere,—that peerless little vale which you and Gray the poet and so many others have joined in admiring as the very Eden of English beauty, peace, and pastoral solitude,—you may possibly recall, even from that flying glimpse you had of it, a modern house called Allan Bank, standing under a low screen of woody rocks which descend from the hill of Silver How, on the western side of the lake. This house had been then recently built by a worthy merchant of Liverpool; but for some reason of no importance to you and me, not being immediately wanted for the family of the owner, had been let for a term of three years to Mr. Wordsworth. At the time I speak of, both Mr. Coleridge and myself were on a visit to Mr. Wordsworth; and one room on the ground floor, designed for a breakfasting-room, which commands a sublime view of the three mountains,—Fairfield, Arthur's Chair, and Seat Sandal (the first of them within about four hundred feet of the highest mountains in Great Britain), was then occupied by Mr. Coleridge as a study. On this particular day, the sun having only just set, it naturally happened that Mr. Coleridge—whose nightly vigils were long—had not yet come down to breakfast: meantime, and until the epoch of the Coleridgian breakfast should arrive, his study was lawfully disposable to profaner uses. Here, therefore, it was, that, opening the door hastily in quest of a book, I found seated, and in earnest conversation, two gentlemen—one of them my host, Mr. Wordsworth, at that time about thirty-seven or thirty-eight years old; the other was a younger man by good sixteen or seventeen years, in a sailor's dress, manifestly in robust health—fervidus juventâ, and wearing upon his countenance a powerful expression of ardour and animated intelligence, mixed with much good nature. 'Mr. Wilson of Elleray'—delivered, as the formula of introduction, in the deep tones of Mr. Wordsworth—at once banished the momentary surprise I felt on finding an unknown stranger where I had expected nobody, and substituted a surprise of another kind: I now well understood who it was that I saw; and there was no wonder in his being at Allan Bank, Elleray standing within nine miles; but (as usually happens in such cases) I felt a shock of surprise on seeing a person so little corresponding to the one I had half unconsciously prefigured.

And here comes the place naturally, if anywhere, for a description of Mr. Wilson's person and general appearance in carriage, manner, and deportment; and a word or two I shall certainly say on these points, simply because I know that I must, else my American friends will complain that I have left out that precise section in my whole account which it is most impossible for them to supply for themselves by any acquaintance with his printed works. Yet suffer me, before I comply with this demand, to enter one word of private protest against the childish (nay, worse than childish—the missy) spirit in which such demands originate. From my very earliest years,—that is the earliest years in which I had any sense of what belongs to true dignity of mind,—I declare to you that I have considered the interest which men, grown men, take in the personal appearance of each other as one of the meanest aspects under which human curiosity commonly presents itself. Certainly I have the same intellectual perception of differences in such things that other men have; but I connect none of the feelings, whether of admiration or contempt, liking or disliking, which are obviously connected with these perceptions by human beings generally. Such words as 'commanding appearance,' 'prepossessing countenance,' applied to the figures or faces of the males of the human species, have no meaning in my ears: no man commands me, no man prepossesses me, by anything in, on, or about his carcass. What care I for any man's legs? I laugh at his ridiculous presumption in conceiting that I shall trouble myself to admire or to respect anything that he can produce in his physics. What! shall I honour Milo for the very qualities which he has in common with the beastly ox he carries—his thews and sinews, his ponderous strength and weight, and the quantity of thumping that his hide will carry? I disclaim and disdain any participation in such green-girl feelings. I admit that the baby feelings I am here condemning are found in connection with the highest intellects: in particular, Mr. Coleridge for instance once said to me, as a justifying reason for his dislike of a certain celebrated Scotsman, with an air of infinite disgust,—'that ugh!' (making a guttural sound as if of execration) 'he (viz. the said Scotsman) was so chicken-breasted.' I have been assured by the way, that Mr. Coleridge was mistaken in the mere matter of fact: but supposing that he were not, what a reason for a philosopher to build a disgust upon! And Mr. Wordsworth, in or about the year 1820, in expressing the extremity of his Nil admirari spirit, declared that he would not go ten yards out of his road to see the finest specimen of man (intellectually speaking) that Europe had to show: and so far indeed I do not quarrel with his opinion; but Mr. Wordsworth went on to say that this indifference did not extend itself to man considered physically; and that he would still exert himself to a small extent (suppose a mile or so) for the sake of seeing Belzoni. That was the case he instanced: and, as I understood him, not by way of a general illustration for his meaning, but that he really felt an exclusive interest in this particular man's physics. Now Belzoni was certainly a good tumbler, as I have heard; and hopped well upon one leg, when surmounted and crested by a pyramid of men and boys; and jumped capitally through a hoop; and did all sorts of tricks in all sorts of styles, not at all worse than any monkey, bear, or learned pig, that ever exhibited in Great Britain. And I would myself have given a shilling to have seen him fight with that cursed Turk that assaulted him in the streets of Cairo; and would have given him a crown for catching the circumcised dog by the throat and effectually taking the conceit out of his Mahometan carcass: but then that would have been for the spectacle of the passions, which, in such a case, would have been let loose: as to the mere animal Belzoni,—who after all was not to be compared to Topham the Warwickshire man, that drew back by main force a cart, and its driver, and a strong horse,—as to the mere animal Belzoni, I say, and his bull neck, I would have much preferred to see a real bull or the Darlington ox. The sum of the matter is this: all men, even those who are most manly in their style of thinking and feeling, in many things retain the childishness of their childish years: no man thoroughly weeds himself of all. And this particular mode of childishness is one of the commonest, into which they fall the more readily from the force of sympathy, and because they apprehend no reason for directing any vigilance against it. But I contend that reasonably no feelings of deep interest are justifiable as applied to any point of external form or feature in human beings, unless under two reservations: first, that they shall have reference to women; because women, being lawfully the objects of passions and tender affections, which can have no existence as applied to men, are objects also, rationally and consistently, of all other secondary feelings (such as those derived from their personal appearance) which have any tendency to promote and support the first. Whereas between men the highest mode of intercourse is merely intellectual, which is not of a nature to receive support or strength from any feelings of pleasure or disgust connected with the accidents of external appearance: but exactly in the degree in which these have any influence at all they must warp and disturb by improper biases; and the single case of exception, where such feelings can be honourable and laudable amongst the males of the human species, is where they regard such deformities as are the known products and expressions of criminal or degrading propensities. All beyond this, I care not by whom countenanced, is infirmity of mind, and would be baseness if it were not excused by imbecility.

Excuse this digression, for which I have a double reason: chiefly I was anxious to put on record my own opinions, and my contempt for men generally in this particular; and here I seemed to have a conspicuous situation for that purpose. Secondly, apart from this purpose of offence, I was at any rate anxious, merely on a defensive principle, to screen myself from the obvious misinterpretation incident to the case: saying anything minute or in detail upon a man's person, I should necessarily be supposed to do so under the ordinary blind feelings of interest in that subject which govern most people; feelings which I disdain. Now, having said all this, and made my formal protest, liberavi animam meam; and I revert to my subject, and shall say that word or two which I was obliged to promise you on Professor Wilson's personal appearance.

Figure to yourself, then, a tall man, about six feet high, within half an inch or so, built with tolerable appearance of strength; but at the date of my description (that is, in the very spring-tide and blossom of youth) wearing, for the predominant character of his person, lightness and agility, or (in our Westmoreland phrase), lishness: he seemed framed with an express view to gymnastic exercises of every sort—

 
"Αλμα, ποδωκειην, δισκον, ακοντα, παλην"
 

In the first of these exercises, indeed, and possibly (but of that I am not equally certain) in the second, I afterwards came to know that he was absolutely unrivalled: and the best leapers at that time in the ring, Richmond the Black and others, on getting 'a taste of his quality,' under circumstances of considerable disadvantage [viz. after a walk from Oxford to Moulsey Hurst, which I believe is fifty miles], declined to undertake him. For this exercise he had two remarkable advantages: it is recorded of Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, that, though otherwise a handsome man, he offended the connoisseurs in statuesque proportions by one eminent defect—perhaps the most obtrusive to which the human figure is liable—viz. a body of length disproportioned to his legs. In Mr. Wilson the proportions were fortunately reversed: a short trunk, and remarkably long legs, gave him one half of his advantages in the noble science of leaping; the other half was afterwards pointed out to me by an accurate critic in these matters as lying in the particular conformation of his foot, the instep of which is arched, and the back of the heel strengthened in so remarkable a way that it would be worth paying a penny or so for a sight of them. It is really laughable to think of the coxcombry which eminent men of letters have displayed in connection with their powers—real or fancied—in this art. Cardinal du Perron vapoured to the end of his life upon some remarkable leap that he either had accomplished, or conceived himself to have accomplished (not, I presume, in red stockings). Every tenth page of the Perroniana rings with the echo of this stupendous leap—the length of which, if I remember rightly, is as obviously fabulous as any feat of Don Belianis of Greece. Des Cartes also had a lurking conceit that, in some unknown place, he had perpetrated a leap that ought to immortalise him; and in one of his letters he repeats and accredits a story of some obscure person's leap, which

 
'At one light bound high overleaped all bound'
 

of reasonable credulity. Many other eminent leapers might be cited, Pagan and Christian: but the Cardinal, by his own account, appears to have been the flower of Popish leapers; and, with all deference to his Eminence, upon a better assurance than that, Professor Wilson may be rated, at the time I speak of, as the flower of all Protestant leapers. Not having the Cardinal's foible of connecting any vanity with this little accomplishment, knowing exactly what could and what could not be effected in this department of gymnastics, and speaking with the utmost simplicity and candour of his failures and his successes alike, he might always be relied upon, and his statements were constantly in harmony with any collateral testimony that chance happened to turn up.

Viewed, therefore, by an eye learned in gymnastic proportions, Mr. Wilson presented a somewhat striking figure: and by some people he was pronounced with emphasis a fine looking young man; but others, who less understood, or less valued these advantages, spoke of him as nothing extraordinary. Still greater division of voices I have heard on his pretensions to be thought handsome. In my opinion, and most certainly in his own, these pretensions were but slender. His complexion was too florid; hair of a hue quite unsuited to that complexion; eyes not good, having no apparent depth, but seeming mere surfaces; and in fine, no one feature that could be called fine, except the lower region of his face, mouth, chin, and the parts adjacent, which were then (and perhaps are now) truly elegant and Ciceronian. Ask in one of your public libraries for that little 4to edition of the Rhetorical Works of Cicero, edited by Schütz (the same who edited Æschylus), and you will there see (as a frontispiece to the 1st vol.) a reduced whole length of Cicero from the antique; which in the mouth and chin, and indeed generally, if I do not greatly forget, will give you a lively representation of the contour and expression of Professor Wilson's face. Taken as a whole, though not handsome (as I have already said), when viewed in a quiescent state, the head and countenance are massy, dignified, and expressive of tranquil sagacity.

Thus far of Professor Wilson in his outward man, whom (to gratify you and yours, and upon the consideration that my letter is to cross the Atlantic), I have described with an effort and a circumstantiation that are truly terrific to look back upon. And now, returning to the course of my narrative, such in personal appearance was the young man upon whom my eyes suddenly rested, for the first time, upwards of twenty years ago, in the study of S. T. Coleridge—looking, as I said before, light as a Mercury to eyes familiar with the British build; but, with reference to the lengthy model of you Yankees, who spindle up so tall and narrow, already rather bulky and columnar. Note, however, that of all this array of personal features, as I have here described them, I then saw nothing at all, my attention being altogether occupied with Mr. Wilson's conversation and demeanour, which were in the highest degree agreeable: the points which chiefly struck me being the humility and gravity with which he spoke of himself, his large expansion of heart, and a certain air of noble frankness which overspread everything he said; he seemed to have an intense enjoyment of life; indeed, being young, rich, healthy, and full of intellectual activity, it could not be very wonderful that he should feel happy and pleased with himself and others; but it was somewhat unusual to find that so rare an assemblage of endowments had communicated no tinge of arrogance to his manner, or at all disturbed the general temperance of his mind.

Turn we now suddenly, and without preparation,—simply by way of illustrating the versatile humour of the man,—from this grave and (as in reality it was) philosophic scene, to another first introduction, under most different circumstances, to the same Mr. Wilson. Represent to yourself the earliest dawn of a fine summer morning, time about half-past two o'clock. A young man, anxious for an introduction to Mr. Wilson, and as yet pretty nearly a stranger to the country, has taken up his abode in Grasmere, and has strolled out at this early hour to that rocky and moorish common (called the White Moss) which overhangs the Vale of Rydal, dividing it from Grasmere. Looking southwards in the direction of Rydal, suddenly he becomes aware of a huge beast advancing at a long trot with the heavy and thundering tread of a hippopotamus along the public road. The creature is soon arrived within half a mile of his station; and by the gray light of morning is at length made out to be a bull apparently flying from some unseen enemy in his rear. As yet, however, all is mystery; but suddenly three horsemen double a turn in the road, and come flying into sight with the speed of a hurricane, manifestly in pursuit of the fugitive bull; the bull labours to navigate his huge bulk to the moor, which he reaches, and then pauses, panting and blowing out clouds of smoke from his nostrils, to look back from his station amongst rocks and slippery crags upon his hunters. If he had conceited that the rockiness of the ground had secured his repose, the foolish bull is soon undeceived; the horsemen, scarcely relaxing their speed, charge up the hill, and speedily gaining the rear of the bull, drive him at a gallop over the worst part of that impracticable ground down into the level ground below. At this point of time the stranger perceives by the increasing light of the morning that the hunters are armed with immense spears fourteen feet long. With these the bull is soon dislodged, and scouring down to the plain below, he and the hunters at his tail take to the common at the head of the lake, and all, in the madness of the chase, are soon half engulfed in the swamps of the morass. After plunging together for ten or fifteen minutes, all suddenly regain the terra firma, and the bull again makes for the rocks. Up to this moment there had been the silence of ghosts; and the stranger had doubted whether the spectacle were not a pageant of aërial spectres, ghostly huntsmen; ghostly lances, and a ghostly bull. But just at this crisis—a voice (it was the voice of Mr. Wilson) shouted aloud, 'Turn the villain; turn that villain; or he will take to Cumberland.' The young stranger did the service required of him; the villain was turned and fled southwards; the hunters, lance in rest, rushed after him; all bowed their thanks as they fled past him; the fleet cavalcade again took the high road; they doubled the cape which shut them out of sight; and in a moment all had disappeared and left the quiet valley to its original silence, whilst the young stranger and two grave Westmoreland statesmen (who by this time had come into sight upon some accident or other) stood wondering in silence, and saying to themselves, perhaps,—

 
'The earth hath bubbles as the water hath;
And these are of them!'
 

But they were no bubbles; the bull was a substantial bull; and took no harm at all from being turned out occasionally at midnight for a chase of fifteen or eighteen miles. The bull, no doubt, used to wonder at this nightly visitation; and the owner of the bull must sometimes have pondered a little on the draggled state in which the swamps would now and then leave his beast; but no other harm came of it. And so it happened, and in the very hurly burly of such an unheard-of chase, that my friend was fortunate enough, by a little service, to recommend himself to the notice of Mr. Wilson; and so passed the scene of his first introduction.

In reading the anecdote of the bull hunt, you must bear in mind the period of Mr. Wilson's life to which it belongs, else I should here be unintentionally adding one more to the thousand misrepresentations of his character, which are already extant in different repositories of scandal: most of which I presume, unless in the rarer cases where they have been the pure creations of malice, owe their origin to a little exaggeration, and a great deal of confusion in dates. Levities and extravagances, which find a ready excuse at twenty, ten or fifteen years later are fatal to a man's character for good sense. In such a case, therefore, to be careless or inaccurate in dates, is a moral dishonesty. Understand then that the bull-hunting scenes belong to the time which immediately succeeded my first knowledge of Mr. Wilson. This particular frolic happened to fall within the earliest period of my own personal acquaintance with him. Else, and with this one exception, the era of his wildest (and according to the common estimate, of his insane) extravagances was already past. All those stories, therefore, which you question me about with so much curiosity, of his having joined a company of strolling players, and himself taken the leading parts both in Tragedy and Comedy—of his having assumed the garb of a Gipsy, and settled for some time in a Gipsy encampment, out of admiration for a young Egyptian beauty; with fifty others of the same class, belong undoubtedly (as many of them as are not wholly fabulous), to the four years immediately preceding the time at which my personal knowledge of Mr. Wilson commenced.

From the latter end of 1803 to the spring of 1808, Mr. Wilson had studied at the University of Oxford; and it was within that period that most of his escapades were crowded. He had previously studied as a mere boy, according to the Scotch fashion, at the University of Glasgow, chiefly under the tuition of the late Mr. Jardine (the Professor, I believe, of Logic), and Dr. or Mr. Young (the Professor of Greek). At both Universities he had greatly distinguished himself; but at Oxford, where the distribution of prizes and honours of every kind is to the last degree parsimonious and select, naturally it follows that such academical distinctions are really significant distinctions, and proclaim an unequivocal merit in him who has carried them off from a crowd of 1600 or 2000 co-rivals, to whom the contest was open; whereas, in the Scotch Universities, as I am told by Scotchmen, the multiplication of prizes and medals, and the almost indiscriminate profusion with which they are showered abroad, neutralises their whole effect and value. At least this was the case in Mr. Wilson's time; but lately some conspicuous changes have been introduced by a Royal Commission (not yet, I believe, dissolved) into one at least of the Scotch Universities, which have greatly improved it in this respect, by bringing it much nearer to the English model. When Mr. Wilson gained a prize of fifty guineas for fifty lines of English verse, without further inquiry it becomes evident, from the mere rarity of the distinction which, for a university now nearly of five thousand members, occurs but once a year, and from the great over-proportion of that peculiar class (the Undergraduates) to whom the contest is open,—that such a victory was an indisputable criterion of very conspicuous merit. In fact, never in any place did Mr. Wilson play off his Proteus variety of character and talent with so much brilliant effect as at Oxford. In this great University, the most ancient, and by many degrees the most magnificent in the world, he found a stage for display, perfectly congenial with the native elevation of his own character. Perhaps you are not fully aware of the characteristic differences which separate our two English Universities of Oxford and Cambridge from those of Scotland and the Continent: for I have always observed that the best informed foreigners, even after a week's personal acquaintance with the Oxford system, still adhere to the inveterate preconceptions which they had brought with them from the Continent. For instance, they continue obstinately to speak of the Professors as the persons to whom the students are indebted for tuition; whereas the majority of these hold their offices as the most absolute sinecures, and the task of tuition devolves upon the tutors appointed in each particular college. These tutors are called public tutors; meaning that they do not confine their instructions to any one individual; but distribute them amongst all the Undergraduates of the college to which they belong; and, in addition to these, private tutors are allowed to any student who chooses to increase his expenditure in that particular. But the main distinction, which applies to our immediate subject, is the more than regal provision for the lodging and accommodation of the students by the system of Colleges. Of these there are in Oxford, neglecting the technical subdivision of Halls, five-and-twenty; and the main use of all, both colleges and halls, is, not as in Scotland and on the Continent, to lodge the head of the University with suitable dignity, and to provide rooms for the library and public business of the University. These purposes are met by a separate provision, distinct from the colleges; and the colleges are applied as follows: 1st, and mainly to the reception of the Fellows, and of the Undergraduate Students; 2ndly, to the accommodation of the head (known in different colleges by the several designations of provost, principal, dean, rector, warden, &c.); 3rdly to the accommodation of the private library attached to that college, and to the chapel, which is used at least twice every day for public prayers; 4thly, to the Hall, and the whole establishment of kitchen, wine vaults, buttery, &c., &c., which may be supposed necessary for the liberal accommodation, at the public meals of dinner [and in some colleges supper] of gentlemen and visitors from the country, or from the Continent; varying (we will suppose) from 25 to 500 heads. Everywhere else the great mass of the students are lodged in obscure nooks and corners, which may or may not be respectable, but are at all events withdrawn from the surveillance of the University. I shall state both the ground and the effect (or tendency rather) of this difference. Out of England, universities are not meant exclusively for professional men; the sons of great landholders, and a large proportion of the sons of noblemen, either go through the same academic course as others—or a shorter course adapted to their particular circumstances. In England, again, the church is supplied from the rank of gentry—not exclusively, it is true, but in a much larger proportion than anywhere else, except in Ireland. The corresponding ranks in Scotland, from their old connection with France, have adopted (I believe) much more of the Continental plan for disposing of their sons at this period. At any rate, it will not be contended by any man, that Scotland throws anything like the same proportion with England, of her gentry and her peerage into her universities. Hence, a higher standard of manners and of habits presides at Oxford and Cambridge; and, consequently, a demand for much higher accommodations would even otherwise have arisen, had not such a demand already been supplied by the munificence of our English princes and peers, both male and female; and, in one instance at least, of a Scottish Prince (Baliol). The extent of these vast Caravanseras enables the governors of the various colleges to furnish every student with a set of two rooms at the least, often with a suite of three—[I, who lived at Oxford on no more than my school allowance, had that number]—or in many cases with far more. In the superior colleges, indeed (superior, I mean, as to their purse and landed endowments), all these accommodations keep pace with the refinements of the age; and thus a connection is maintained between the University and the landed Noblesse—upper and lower—of England, which must be reciprocally beneficial, and which, under other circumstances, could scarcely have taken place.