Formerly the collegians met sociably, after dinner in the hall, to drink wine in each other’s apartments, and expended two shillings, or perhaps half a crown, on something like a desert, which usually consisted of a few biscuits, apples, and walnuts. Now forsooth, two pounds will hardly suffice for this indulgence, which is carried to a most pernicious and culpable excess: now there must be ices, the most costly fruits, sweetmeats, and the like. The expence of a desert was formerly so trifling, that it hardly came into the calculation of expences. Now it forms a very serious part of a young man’s items of incumbrances; and I have seen a bill for this unnecessary luxury, incurred in the period of a year, by a youth whose parents were obliged to practise much self-denial and forbearance to maintain him at college, exceeding fifty pounds. Now ought this to be? And may it not, with a little exertion on the part of the superiors at the universities, in part at least be remedied? I could say much more on this subject, for a thousand abuses, absurdities, and irregularities, press upon my mind, but it is time that I should return to myself, and the _good old time_. Flagrantior æquo Non debet dolor esse viri nec vulnere major. CHAPTER VI. On my first arrival at the university, I felt myself on the wide sea, out of sight of land, with little knowledge of the compass, and in a vessel by no means sea-worthy. Ere long, however, I learned to take an observation; became better acquainted with my real situation, and steered along with tolerable steadiness. I had not, however, been a great while at college, when my bark in a squall struck against a sunken rock, and had well nigh foundered. Two young men of the college, of much higher pretensions than myself as to worldly prospects, of much humbler, perhaps, as to intellectual endowment, offended me by their neglect, and disgusted me by their arrogance. In a thoughtless moment, I inscribed an epigram in one of the chapel prayer-books, so apposite, that it could be applied to nobody else, and so severe, as unavoidably to provoke their indignation and resentment. They were of some standing, I a raw freshman. The consequence was, that they formed a party against me, and, from the plausible argument that no one was safe from such a talent, so exercised, I was avoided as a dangerous malignant. This affliction (and a great one it was for a time) might easily have been averted, but for the insincerity of a young man, to whom I was more particularly recommended, and who called himself my friend. He was the first, who discovered this specimen of rashness and folly, and instead of erasing it, and remonstrating with me on the danger and impropriety of my conduct, he carried it to the parties concerned, induced, as I am rather inclined to suspect, by some secret jealousy of my supposed superiority in learning, which threatened to interrupt his views. This false friend,