Every single point of my future position and connection, to what college I would attach myself, and in which of the two orders open to my admission I would enrol myself, was left absolutely to my own election. My coming at all, in this year, arose out of an accident of conversation. In the latter half of 1803, I was living with my mother at the Priory of St. J----, a beautiful place which she had in part planned, and built, but chiefly repaired out of a very ancient Gothic monastery; when my uncle, a military man, on a visit to England, after twenty-five years' absence in India, suddenly remarked, that in my case he should feel it shameful to be "tied to my mother's apron-string," for was I not eighteen years old? I answered that certainly I was: but what could I do? My guardians had the power to control my expenditure until I should be twenty-one; and they, it was certain, would never aid my purpose of going to Oxford, having quarrelled with me on that very point. My uncle, a man of restless activity, spoke to my mother immediately, I presume, for within one hour I was summoned to her presence. Among other questions, she put this to me, which is importantly connected with my future experience at Oxford, and my coming account of it:--"Your guardians," she prefaced, "still continue to me your school allowance of £100. To this, for the present, when your sisters cost me such heavy deductions from my own income, I cannot undertake to make any addition--that is, you are not to count upon any. But, of course, you will be free to spend your entire Oxford vacations, and as much time besides as the rules of your college will dispense with your attendance, at my house, wherever that may be. On this understanding, are you willing to undertake an Oxford life, upon so small an allowance as £100 per annum?" My answer was by a cheerful and prompt assent. For I felt satisfied, and said as much to my mother, that, although this might sound, and might really prove, on a common system of expenditure, ludicrously below the demands of the place, yet in Oxford, no less than in other cities, it must be possible for a young man of firm mind to live on a hundred pounds annually, if he pleased to do so, and to live respectably. I guessed even then how the matter stood; and so in my own experience I found it. If a young man were known to be of trivial pursuits, with slight habits of study, and "strong book-mindedness," naturally enough his college peers who should happen to be idlers would question his right to court solitude. They would demand a sight of his warrant of exemption from ordinary usages; and, finding none, they would see a plain argument of his poverty. And, doubtless, when this happens to be the sole characteristic point about a man, and is balanced by no form of personal respectability, it does so far lead to contempt as to make a man's situation mortifying and painful; but not more so, I affirm, in Oxford than anywhere else.