I knew that my entering a course of open profligacy would not be tolerated by my parents. I had a character for steadiness among the tutors and fellows of the college, which I was ashamed to lose; though even before them I found it sometimes to answer best not to appear different from other young men. Besides, as I had resisted the first period of attacks, and established among my companions a kind of character of my own, I felt that even they would be astonished if I at last declared myself as one of their sort. I could not bear the thought of their triumph, and the horrid congratulations with which I should be greeted, if once I was found going along with them in open feats of iniquity. Oh! how grievous is the reflection that by such motives as these I was restrained. I was longing often to be like them. I could not bear the taunts which were sometimes made at me. Here again some of the old Etonians perhaps would bring up the remembrance of my ancient propensity to blush, and would take pleasure in putting me again to confusion. Occasionally, by strange interpositions of Divine Providence, I was hindered from accomplishing purposes of evil which I had, in a sort of desperation, resolved by myself to perpetrate, by way of being decided one way or other, like a man on the brink of a precipice determining to throw himself down in order to escape the uneasy apprehension of his danger. One way or another I was restrained, so that it has afterwards appeared to me as if I had but barely stopped short of {38} taking the last decisive steps by which I might be irrevocably ranked among the reprobate. I never thought at the time of this danger, otherwise I could hardly have borne my existence; but, as it was, my mind at times was gloomy and miserable in the extreme. To make me yet more so, at the end of my first year I began to be afflicted with bilious attacks, arising, perhaps, from my imprudent management in regard to study, to diet, and to hours; and these occasioned exceeding depression of spirits, under which I used to fancy myself the most unhappy of creatures. I had no knowledge of the power of religion to set me free, and make me superior to all external sensible causes of depression, and I knew no better than to give myself up to my low feelings when they came upon me, till some distraction removed them, or till the fit passed away of itself. Many times at Cambridge, in order to hold up my head in a noisy company after dinner, I drank wine to raise my spirits, though not to great excess, yet enough to teach me by experience how mistaken is the calculation of those who, when in sorrow, seek to cheer themselves in that way, or in any way but by having recourse to God by prayer and acts of resignation. I remember well once being told by a good aunt of mine, that it was quite wrong to give way to my depression, about which I one day complained to her, and that