floor of the schools was filled with the juniors, but many of high standing in the university assembled in the gallery. The Moderator had nominated the same gentleman as my first opponent, who no doubt felt every motive to renew the contest, and bring me to a proper sense of my presumption. The term was now drawing near to its close, and I began to feel very sensibly the effects of my too intense application, my whole frame being debilitated in a manner, that warned me I had not long to continue my course of labour without the interruption of some serious attack; I had in fact the seeds of a rheumatic fever lurking in my constitution, and was led between two of my friends and fellow collegians to the schools in a very feeble state. I was however intellectually alive to all the purposes of the business we were upon, and when I observed that the Moderator exhibited symptoms of indisposition by resting his head upon the cushion on his desk, I cut short my thesis to make way for my opponent, who had hardly brought his argument to bear, when the Moderator, on the plea of sudden indisposition, dismissed me with à speech, which, though tinctured with some

petulance, had more of praise in it than I expected to receive.

I yielded now to advice, and paid attention to my health, till we were cited to the senate house to be examined for our Bachelor's degree. It was hardly ever my lot during that examination to enjoy any respite. I seemed an object singled out as every man's mark, and was kept perpetually at the table under the process of question and answer. My constitution just held me up to the expiration of the scrutiny, and I immediately hastened to my own home to alarm my parents with my ghastly looks, and soon fell ill of a rheumatic fever, which for the space of six months kept me hovering between life and death. The skill of my physician, the aforementioned Doctor Wallis of Stamford, and the tender attention of the dear friends about me, rescued me at length, and I recovered under their care. Whilst I was in this state I had the pleasure of hearing from Cambridge of the high station, which had been adjudged to me amongst The Wranglers of my year, and I further understood how much I was indebted to the generous support of that very Moderator, whom I had

thwarted in the matter of my questions, for this adjudication so much in my favour and perhaps above my merits, for my knowledge had been hastily attained: a conduct so candid on the part of the Reverend Mr. Ray, (fellow of Corpus Christi, and the Moderator, of whom I have been speaking) was ever remembered by me with gratitude and respect: Mr. Ray was afterwards domestic chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and, when I was resident in town, I waited upon him at Lambeth palace to express my sensibility of the very liberal manner, in which he had protected me.

I now found myself in a station of ease and credit in my native college, to which I was attached by every tye, that could endear it to me. I had changed my Under-graduate's gown, and obtained my degree of Bachelor of Arts with honors hardly earned by pains the more severe because so long postponed: and now if I have been seemingly too elaborate in tracing my own particular progress through these exercises, to which the candidate for a degree at Cambridge must of necessity conform, it is not merely because I can quote my privilege for my excuse, but because I would

most earnestly impress upon the attention of my reader the extreme usefulness of these aca demical exercises and the studies appertaining to them, by which I consider all the purposes of an university education are completed; and so convinced am I of this, that I can hardly allow myself to call that an education, of which they do not make a part; if therefore I am to speak for the discipline of the schools, ought I not first to show that I am speaking from experience, without which opinions pass for nothing? Having therefore first demonstrated what my experience of that discipline has been, I have the authority of that, as far as it goes, for an opinion in its favour, which every observation of my life has since contributed to establish and confirm. What more can any system of education hold out to those, who are the objects of it, than public honours to distinguish merit, public exercises to awaken emulation, and public examinations, which cannot be passed without extorting some exertion even from the indolent, nor can be avoided without a marked disgrace to the compounder? Now if I have any knowledge of the world,

any insight into the minds and characters of those, whom I have had opportunities of knowing, (and few have lived more and longer amongst mankind) all my observations tend to convince me that there is no profession, no art, no station or condition in life, to which the studies I have been speaking of will not apply and come in aid with profit and advantage. That mode of investigation step by step, which crowns the process of the student by the demonstration and discovery of positive and mathematical truth, must of necessity so exercise and train him in the habits of following up his subject, be it what it may, and working out his proofs, as cannot fail to find their uses, whether he, who has them, dictates from the pulpit, argues at the bar or declaims in the senate; nay, there is no lot, no station, (I repeat it with confidence) be it either social or sequestered, conspicuous or obscure, professional or idly independent, in which the man, once exercised in these studies, though he shall afterwards neglect them, will not to his comfort experience some mental powers and resources, in which their in