It was really farcical to see the good old president confer degrees with an attempt at ceremony, which seemed to have no rubric but extemporary convenience, and no purpose but the despatch of business. All this may seem to have nothing to do with my subject; yet I felt myself that the regicides had a good deal to do with it. In this college, one sees the best that Puritanism could produce; and I thought what Oxford and Cambridge might have become under the invading reforms of the usurpation, had the Protectorate been less impotent to reproduce itself, and carry out its natural results on those venerable foundations. On the day following that of the Commencement, I took a drive to West Rock. I was so happy as to have the company of a very intelligent person from the Southern States, and of a young lady, his relative, who was very ambitious to make the excursion. It was a pleasant drive of about three miles to the foot of the mountain, where we alighted, the driver leaving the horses in charge of themselves, and undertaking the office of guide. It was somewhat tedious climbing for our fair friend; but up we went, over rough stones, creeping vines and brushwood, that showed no signs of being very frequently disturbed; our guide keeping the bright buttons of his coat-skirts before us, and in some other respects reminding me of Mephistopheles on the Hartz. It certainly was very accommodating in Nature, to provide the lofty chambers of the regicides with such a staircase; for in their day it must have defied any ordinary search, and when found must have presented as many barriers of brier and thicket, as grew up around the Sleeping Beauty in the fairy tale.