whole college of the finest youth of any country? His motives may be beneath a Christian's standard, but the fact that with this weak armour, the bare shadow of what it might be, he made such noble resistance and passed almost unscathed through the furnace into which he was cast, only shows what he would have done had he been imbued with the teachings of a higher order. The very human respect and worldly considerations that succeeded in keeping him from vice, acquire a respectability and a status in the catalogue of preservatives from the fact of their being successful in his case. His was a fine mind, and one is moved to tears at seeing this noble material for sanctity thus tossed {41} about and buffeted by a herd of capricious companions who could not see its beauty. Let us take up any young man's journal of his age and read some pages of it, what shall we find? Jokes played upon green freshmen, tricks for outdoing proctors, records of follies, or perchance pompous unreality put on to conceal all these or worse. His diary is the generous utterance of a noble mind; it is candid, true, conscientious, and puts a failing and a perfection of the writer side by side. It is no wonder that he was loved and courted, and that his companions had acquired an esteem for him in college, which years and toils have not succeeded in lessening. His keen grief at the deficiencies of his college life only shows to what height of sanctity he had reached, when what another might boast of wrung from him these lamentations. {42} CHAPTER VII. Conclusion Of His First Year In Cambridge. The events recorded in his journal at this time could very conveniently be swelled into chapters, if one had a mind to be diffuse. To trace the fortunes of the gentlemen he comes in contact with--Denison, Wodehouse, Carlisle, Hildyard, Brougham, and a host of others, who afterwards shone in different circles, High Church controversies, pleadings at the bar, parliamentary debates, and Irish Lord-lieutenancies,--would form some very interesting episodes. We should add many titles to the off-handed surnames of the collegian's journal, and say a few words about how those dignities were procured, earned, and worn by the possessors. It might be, perhaps, interesting to some readers to know how many gay young noblemen were enticed into becoming sons-in-law to some very reverend doctors. All this and more Mr. Spencer notes down in the journal, but it is not our theme.