<VG123.JPG> THE intelligent reader - which epithet I take to be a synonym for every one who has perused the first part of the Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, - will remember the statement, that the hero of the narrative "had gained so much experience during his Freshman's term, that, when the pleasures of the Long Vacation were at an end, and he had returned to Brazenface with his firm and fast friend Charles Larkyns, he felt himself entitled to assume a patronizing air to the Freshmen, who then entered, and even sought to impose upon their credulity in ways which his own personal experience suggested." And the intelligent reader will further call to mind the fact that the first part of these memoirs concluded with the words -"it was clear that Mr. Verdant Green had made his farewell bow as an Oxford Freshman." But, although Mr. Verdant Green had of necessity ceased to be "a Freshman" as soon as he had entered upon his second term of residence, - the name being given to students in their first term only, - yet this necessity, which, as we all know, ~non habet leges~, will occasionally prove its rule by an exception; and if Mr. Verdant Green was no longer a freshman in name, he still continued to be one by nature. And the intelligent reader will perceive when he comes to study these veracious memoirs, that, although their hero will no longer display those peculiarly virulent symptoms of freshness, which drew towards him so much friendly sympathy during the earlier part of his University career, yet that he will still, by his innocent simpli- [124 ADVENTURES OF MR. VERDANT GREEN] city and credulity, occasionally evidence the truth of the Horatian maxim,- "Quo semel est imbuta recens, servabit odorem Testa diu;"* which, when ~Smart~-ly translated, means, "A cask will long preserve the flavour, with which, when new, it was once impregnated;" and which, when rendered in the Saxon vulgate, signifieth, "What is bred in the bone will come out in the flesh."