(From an interesting paper on "the Violin," in the _Metropolitan_.)

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THE CAMBRIDGE "FRESHMAN."


See a stripling alighting from the Cambridge "Fly" at Crisford's Hotel,
Trumpington-street. It is a day or two before the commencement of the
October term, and a small cluster of gownsmen are gathered round to make
their several recognitions of returning friends, in spite of shawls,
cloaks, petershams, patent gambroons, and wrap-rascals, in which they are
enveloped; while our fresh-comer's attention is divided between their
sable "curtains" and solicitude for his bags and portmanteau. If his pale
cheek and lack-lustre eye could speak but for a moment, like Balaam's ass,
what painful truths would they discover! what weary watchings over the
midnight taper would they describe! If those fingers, which are now as
white as windsor soap can make them, could complain of their wrongs, what
contaminations with dusty Ainsworth and Scapulas would they enumerate! if
his brain were to reveal its labours, what labyrinths of prose and verse,
in which it has been bewildered when it had no clue of a friendly
translation, or Clavis to conduct it through the wanderings, would it
disclose! what permutations and combinations of commas, what elisions and
additions of letters, what copious annotations on a word, an accent, or a
stop, parallelizing a passage of Plato with one of Anacreon, one of
Xenophon with one of Lycophron, or referring the juvenile reader to a
manuscript in the Vatican,--what inexplicable explanations would it
anathematize!