our two friends had recovered their legs, we were all in marching order for the Mitre; working in sinuosities along, for not one of the party could have moved at right angles to any given point, or have counted six street lamps without at least multiplying them to a dozen. In a word, they were ripe for any spree, full of frolic, and bent on mischief; witness the piling a huge load of coals ~248~~against one man's door, screwing up the oak of another, and _milling the glaze_ of a third, before we quitted the precincts of Brazen-nose, which we did separately, to escape observation from the Cerberus who guarded the portal. It is in a college wine-party that the true character of your early associates are easily discoverable: out of the excesses of the table very often spring the truest impressions, the first, but indelible affection which links kindred spirits together in after-time, and cements with increasing years into the most inviolable friendship. Here the sallies of youth, unchecked by care, or fettered by restraint, give loose to mirth and revelry; and the brilliancy of genius and the warm-hearted gaiety of pure delight are found in the highest perfection. The blue light of heaven illumined the magnificent square of Radcliffe, when we passed from beneath the porch of Brazen-nose, and tipping with her silvery light the surrounding architecture, lent additional beauty to the solemn splendour of the scene. Sophisticated as my faculties certainly were by the copious libations and occurrences of the day, I could yet admire with reverential awe the imposing grandeur by which I was surrounded. A wayward being from my infancy, not the least mark of my eccentricity is the peculiar humour in which I find myself when I have sacrificed too freely to the jolly god: unlike the major part of mankind, my temperament, instead of being invigorated and enlivened by the sparkling juice of the grape, loses its wonted nerve and elasticity; a sombre gloominess pervades the system, the pulse becomes nervous and languid, the spirits flagging and depressed, and the mind full of chimerical apprehensions and _ennui_. It was in this mood that Eglantine found me ruminating on the noble works before me, while resting against a part of the pile of Radcliffe library, contemplating ~249~~the elegant crocketed pinnacles of All Souls, the delicately taper spire of St. Mary's, and the clustered enrichments and imperial canopies of masonry, and splendid traceries which every where strike the eye: all of which objects were rendered trebly impressive from the stillness of the night, and the flittering light by which they were illumined. I had enough of wine and frolic, and had hoped to have _shirked_ the party and stolen quietly to my lodgings, there to indulge in my lucubrations on the scene I had witnessed, and note in my journal, according to my usual practice, the more prominent events of the day, when Horace commenced with--