[18 ADVENTURES OF MR. VERDANT GREEN]

Much more did the rector say, not only on this occasion, but on
others; and the more frequently he returned to the charge, the less
resistance were his arguments met with; and the result was, that Mr.
Green was fully persuaded that a university was the proper sphere for
his son to move in. But it was not without many a pang and much
secret misgiving that Mrs. Green would consent to suffer her beloved
Verdant to run the risk of those dreadful contaminations which she
imagined would inevitably accompany every college career. Indeed,
she thought it an act of the greatest heroism (or, if you object to
the word, heroineism) to be won over to say "yes" to the proposal;
and it was not until Miss Virginia had recited to her the deeds of
all the mothers of Greece and Rome who had suffered for their
children's sake, that Mrs. Green would consent to sacrifice her
maternal feelings at the sacred altar of duty.

When the point had been duly settled, that Mr. Verdant Green was to
receive a university education, the next question to be decided was,
to which of the three Universities should he go? To Oxford,
Cambridge, or Durham? But this was a matter which was soon determined
upon. Mr. Green at once put Durham aside, on account of its infancy,
and its wanting the ~prestige~ that attaches to the names of the two
great Universities. Cambridge was treated quite as summarily,
because Mr. Green had conceived the notion that nothing but
mathematics were ever thought or talked of there; and as he himself
had always had an abhorrence of them from his youth up, when he was
hebdomadally flogged for not getting-up his weekly propositions, he