"My studies I followed with great zeal all the time I was at Cambridge; but, as is generally the case there with those that aim at places in the public examinations, I managed them without proper distribution of time. By running through the journal I kept at the time I find that, when {30} first I began to read hard, I have often sat without moving from my table and read the clock round, that is, from three or four in the afternoon to the same hour the next morning, for the sake of doing what was counted an extraordinary feat. There is no doubt that reading with regularity a smaller number of hours every day would be more available for the attainment of learning than these immoderate surfeits of study, as one may call them; I only interposed a few days of amusement, when hardly any work was done. In the long run, such a course as mine could not answer, for it was sure to hurt the health and prevent the attainment of the real end of all a young man's studies, which is, acquiring knowledge to be turned to account in after life. Few young men at Oxford or Cambridge, I suppose, have wisdom enough to calculate this in advance. The object which they aim at is present distinction, and outstripping their fellows in the race for college prizes; and, as far as my experience goes, a glut of reading, if the health does but stand it without breaking down, is the way to make the most of one's chance at a public examination. "The time of my being at Cambridge is one so interesting to me in the recollection, that I cannot satisfy myself, when giving an account of my progress through life, without dwelling at some length upon it. My college course was not very long. At the time when I was at Cambridge, honorary degrees were conferred on the sons of noblemen at the end of two years' residence, by which they came to the enjoyment of the rank and all the privileges of a Master of Arts, which title was not to be attained, in the ordinary course, in less than six or seven years. And what shortens the college life much more is the extravagant length of the vacations; so that what is reckoned one year at Cambridge is not more than five months' actual residence in the University. Yet this is a most important and critical period, and the short two years during which I was an undergraduate at Cambridge were of immense importance in my destiny. How vast is the good, of which I have learned the loss, but which I might have gained, had I then known how to direct my views! On the other hand, how {31} may I bless God for the quantity of evil from which I have been preserved, and how wonderful has been my preservation! When I remember how destitute I was of religion at this time, I must say that I have to wonder rather at my being preserved from so much evil, than at my having fallen into so much. And how can I bless God for his exceeding goodness of which I am now