After the first flush of novelty had worn off, they bored one
intensely--those large wines and suppers where, night by night, a score
of Nephelégeretæ sat shrouded in smoke, chanting the same equivocal
ditties, drinking the same fiery liquors miscalled the juice of the
grape, villainous enough to make the patriarch that planted the vine
stir remorsefully in his grave under Ararat--each man all the while
talking "shop," _à l'outrance_. The skeleton of ennui sat at these
dreary feasts; and it was not even crowned with roses. I often used to
wonder what the majority of my contemporaries conversed about, when in
the bosom of their families, during the "long." They couldn't _always_
have been inflicting Oxford on their miserable relatives; the weakest of
human natures would have revolted against such tyranny; and yet the
horizon of their ideas seemed as utterly bounded by Bagley and
Headington Hill as if the great ocean-stream had flowed outside those
limits. Some adventurous spirits, it is true, stretched away as far as
Woodstock and Abingdon, but I doubt if they returned much improved by
the grand tour.

One of their most remarkable characteristics was the invincible terror
and repugnance that they appeared to entertain to the society of women
of their own class. When the visitation was inevitable, it is
impossible to describe the great horror that fell on these unfortunate
boys. The feeling of Zanoni's pupil, as the Watcher on the Threshold
came floating and creeping toward him, was nothing to it.

For example, at Commemoration--to which festival "lions" from all
quarters of the earth resorted in vast droves--when one of this class
was hard hit by the charms of some fair stranger, he never thought of
expressing his admiration otherwise than by piteous looks, directed at