from the mouth of a gay, gallant young officer; and if there were more of his character who were not ashamed to give it to their young brothers and friends, how many might be saved, who are now lost, because they do not see one example to show how a manly, fashionable character can be maintained with strict morality and modesty. These few words from him were of infinite service to me. They made deep impression on me at the time I heard them, and the resolution which I then made continued with me till after I had been some time at Cambridge, when the battle I had to bear against the universal fashion {35} of iniquity once more, as formerly, at Eton, proved too strong for me, and I again gave way. My fall now was gradual. I began with the resolution to avoid all expenses which would embarrass me with debts, and to keep from several fashionable amusements which would engage too much time. For awhile, on this account, I would not play at cards; but in less than half-a-year this determination failed, and I wasted many an evening at whist of my short college life. I soon grew careless, too, about my expenses, and should have been involved in great embarrassments, had it not been for my brother's (Lord Althorp's) generosity, who, hearing from me at the end of my first year that I was in debt, gave me more than enough to clear it all away; and, thus having enabled me to set my affairs again in order, was the means of saving me from ever afterwards going beyond my means extravagantly. I might, however, have given way in some such resolutions as not playing at cards; I might have entered into some expenses which I shunned at first, without losing my peace of mind, and again defiling my conscience, of which the good condition was partly restored; but these were not the crying evils of the place. In the set with which I was now associated in the University, gambling was not at that time much practised, and not at all insisted on. There were occasional drunken parties, and it was with difficulty that I kept out of them; but the system of violently forcing people to drink, as well at the Universities as throughout genteel society in England, had fallen off before my time. There were some sets where drinking was practised at Cambridge much more excessively than in what called itself the best set of all. I could not help, without offending the laws of society, being present at a considerable number of dinners and suppers where men drank immoderately, but I was permitted to keep myself sober without much difficulty; one or two gave me countenance thus far, though any intimation of disapproving of what others did, on religious or moral grounds, I felt would not have been anyways tolerated; and so I ventured not. Swearing was among them rather unfashionable than {36} not. Some undergraduates were notorious for profane and impious language; and this was excused,