its Hume, and its Lord John, and its "Dizzy;" and how they went through the same traditional forms, and preserved the same time-honoured ideas, and debated in the fullest houses, with the greatest spirit and the greatest length, on such points <VG111-1.JPG> as, "What course is it advisable for this country to take in regard to the government of its Indian possessions, and the imprisonment of Mr. Jones by the Rajah of Humbugpoopoonah?" <VG111-2.JPG> Indeed, Mr. Verdant Green was so excited by this interesting debate, that on the third night of its adjournment he rose to address the House; but being "no orator as Brutus is," his few broken words were received with laughter, and the honourable gentleman was coughed down. Our hero had, as an Oxford freshman, to go through that cheerful form called "sitting in the schools," - a form which consisted in the following ceremony. Through a door in the right-hand corner of the Schools Quadrangle, - (Oh, that door! [112 ADVENTURES OF MR. VERDANT GREEN] does it not bring a pang into your heart only to think of it? to remember the day when you went in there as pale as the little pair of bands in which you were dressed for your sacrifice; and came out all in a glow and a chill when your examination was over; and posted your bosom-friend there to receive from Purdue the little slip of paper, and bring you the thrilling intelligence that you had passed; or to come empty-handed, and say that you had been plucked! Oh, that door! well <VG112.JPG> might be inscribed there the line which, on Dante's authority, is assigned to the door of another place, - "ALL HOPE ABANDON, YE WHO ENTER HERE!") - entering through this door in company with several other unfortunates, our hero passed between two galleries through a passage, by which, if the place had been a circus, the horses would have entered, and found himself in a tolerably large room lighted on either side by windows, and panelled half-way up the walls. Down the centre of this room ran a large green-baize-covered table, on the one side of which were some eight or ten miserable beings who were then undergoing examination, and were supplied with pens, ink, blotting-pad, and large sheets of thin "scribble-paper," on which they were struggling to impress their ideas; or else had a book set before them, [AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 113]