CHAPTER III.

UNDERGRADUATE LIFE AT BALLIOL AND JOURNEYS ON THE CONTINENT.

1845--1852.



University life is apt to exert a strong influence upon a man's
career. It comes at the age at which there is probably the most
susceptibility to new impressions. The physical growth is over, and
the almost exclusive craving for exercise and sport is lessening;
there is more voluntary inclination to intellectual application, and
the mind begins to get fair play. There is also a certain liberty of
choice as to the course to be taken and the persons who shall become
guides, and this renders the pupilage a more willing and congenial
connection than that of the schoolboy: nor is there so wide a
distance in age and habits between tutor and pupil as between master
and scholar.

Thus it is that there are few more influential persons in the country
than leading University men, for the impress they leave is on the
flower of English youth, at the very time of life when thought has
come, but action is not yet required. At the same time the whole
genius loti, the venerable buildings with their traditions, the
eminence secured by intellect and industry, the pride that is taken
in the past and its great men, first as belonging to the University,
and next to the individual college, all give the members thereof a
sense of a dignity to keep up and of honour to maintain, and a