rooms, during the eight months of his titular office, the tutor and
pupil lived in the same college as strangers to each other. The
want of experience, of advice, and of occupation, soon betrayed me
into some improprieties of conduct, ill-chosen company, late hours,
and inconsiderate expense. My growing debts might be secret; but my
frequent absence was visible and scandalous: and a tour to Bath, a
visit into Buckingham-shire, and four excursions to London in the
same winter, were costly and dangerous frolics. They were, indeed,
without a meaning, as without an excuse. The irksomeness of a
cloistered life repeatedly tempted me to wander; but my chief
pleasure was that of travelling; and I was too young and bashful to
enjoy, like a Manly Oxonian in Town, the pleasures of London. In
all these excursions I eloped from Oxford; I returned to college; in
a few days I eloped again, as if I had been an independent stranger
in a hired lodging, without once hearing the voice of admonition,
without once feeling the hand of control. Yet my time was lost, my
expenses were multiplied, my behaviour abroad was unknown; folly as
well as vice should have awakened the attention of my superiors, and
my tender years would have justified a more than ordinary degree of
restraint and discipline.

It might at least be expected, that an ecclesiastical school should
inculcate the orthodox principles of religion. But our venerable
mother had contrived to unite the opposite extremes of bigotry and
indifference: an heretic, or unbeliever, was a monster in her eyes;
but she was always, or often, or sometimes, remiss in the spiritual
education of her own children. According to the statutes of the
university, every student, before he is matriculated, must subscribe
his assent to the thirty-nine articles of the church of England,
which are signed by more than read, and read by more than believe