gladiatorial trials of national prowess. The victories of England in
this stupendous contest rose of themselves as natural _Te Deums_ to
heaven; and it was felt by the thoughtful that such victories, at such
a crisis of general prostration, were not more beneficial to ourselves
than finally to France, our enemy, and to the nations of all western or
central Europe, through whose pusillanimity it was that the French
domination had prospered.

The mail-coach, as the national organ for publishing these mighty
events, thus diffusively influential, became itself a spiritualised and
glorified object to an impassioned heart; and naturally, in the Oxford
of that day, _all_ hearts were impassioned, as being all (or nearly
all) in _early_ manhood. In most universities there is one single
college; in Oxford there were five-and-twenty, all of which were
peopled by young men, the _elite_ of their own generation; not
boys, but men: none under eighteen. In some of these many colleges the
custom permitted the student to keep what are called "short terms";
that is, the four terms of Michaelmas, Lent, Easter, and Act, were kept
by a residence, in the aggregate, of ninety-one days, or thirteen
weeks. Under this interrupted residence, it was possible that a student
might have a reason for going down to his home four times in the year.
This made eight journeys to and fro. But, as these homes lay dispersed
through all the shires of the island, and most of us disdained all
coaches except his Majesty's mail, no city out of London could pretend
to so extensive a connexion with Mr. Palmer's establishment as Oxford.
Three mails, at the least, I remember as passing every day through
Oxford, and benefiting by my personal patronage--viz., the Worcester,
the Gloucester, and the Holyhead mail. Naturally, therefore, it became
a point of some interest with us, whose journeys revolved every six
weeks on an average, to look a little into the executive details of the