In the evening, at dinner in the college hall, he puts all of his emotion into the grace before meat, and by his slow, loving utterance robs the fellows of their chairs and the undergraduates of their talk. He scans curiously the healthy or clever or human faces of his contemporaries at the table. As all visible things are symbols, he supposes that something, which he is too inexperienced to understand, distinguishes these youths from the others with similar faces in London or elsewhere. He answers a few questions about his school and his athletic record. Then he falls back upon the coats of arms and the founders’ portraits on the walls, and is glad when he has returned to his room. There, the unpacking and arrangement of a hundred books fill the hours until long after midnight. For he kneels and opens and reads a page, and dreams and reopens, and goes to the window, to listen or watch. Not a book but he finds flat and uninspired, and quite unworthy of his first Oxford night. He wants something more megalophonous than De Quincey, more perfect than Pater, more fantastic than Browne, more sweet than Newman,--something that shall be witty, spiritual, gay, and solemn in a breath,--something in short that was never yet written by pen and ink, although often inspired by a night like this. The eager hours and unreluctant years As on a dawn-illumined mountain stood, Trampling to silence their loud hopes and fears, Darkening each other with their multitude, And cried aloud, Liberty! And so he sleeps; but in spite of his great dreams, he is not disappointed when he looks out upon the glorious company of the spires and towers of Oxford. He rises early, and is surprised when he meets only the college cat in the quadrangle, and the gate is shut. But he returns quite cheerfully to his room, to read Virgil while the dreamy sky is still tender with the parting touch of night. After breakfast, and some disbursements to porter and scout, he begins to make acquaintances, over a newspaper in the junior common room, or at a preliminary visit to his tutor. With one, he walks up and down High Street: he learns which are the tailors and which are not. With another, he goes out to Parson’s Pleasure, and likes the willows of Mesopotamia, and sees New College Tower: he wants to loiter in the churchyard of Holy Cross, but is scornfully reminded that Byron did much the same. Queen’s College inspires his companion with the remark that Queen in Oxford is called “Quagger.” The Martyr’s Memorial calls forth “Maggers Memugger”; Worcester, “Wuggins”; Jesus, “Jaggers”: and he is much derided when he supposes that the scouts use these terms.