instance at least, of a _Scottish_ Prince (Baliol). The extent of these vast Caravanseras enables the governors of the various colleges to furnish every student with a set of two rooms at the least, often with a _suite_ of three--[I, who lived at Oxford on no more than my school allowance, had that number]--or in many cases with far more. In the superior colleges, indeed (superior, I mean, as to their purse and landed endowments), all these accommodations keep pace with the refinements of the age; and thus a connection is maintained between the University and the landed _Noblesse_--upper and lower--of England, which must be reciprocally beneficial, and which, under other circumstances, could scarcely have taken place. Of these advantages, you may be sure, that Mr. Wilson availed himself to the utmost extent. Instead of going to _Baliol_ College, he entered himself at _Magdalen_, in the class of what are called, 'Gentlemen Commoners.' All of us (you know) in Oxford and Cambridge wear an Academic dress, which tells at once our Academic rank with all its modifications. And the term '_Gentlemen Commoner_' implies that he has more splendid costumes, and more in number; that he is expected to spend a good deal more money, that he enjoys a few trifling immunities; and that he has, in particular instances, something like a King's right of pre-emption, as in the choice of rooms, &c. Once launched in this orbit, Mr. Wilson continued to blaze away for the four successive years, 1804, 1805, 1806, 1807, I believe without any intermission. Possibly I myself was the one sole gownsman who had not then found my attention fixed by his most heterogeneous reputation. In a similar case, Cicero tells a man that ignorance so unaccountable of another man's pretensions argued himself to be a _homo ignorabilis_; or, in the language of the Miltonic Satan, 'Not to know me, argues thyself unknown.' And _that_ is true; a _homo ignorabilis_ most certainly I was. And even with that admission it is still difficult to account for the extent and the duration of my ignorance. The fact is, that the case well expresses _both_ our positions; that _he_ should be so conspicuous as to challenge knowledge from the most sequestered of anchorites expresses _his_ life; that I should have right to absolute ignorance of him who was familiar as daylight to all the rest of Oxford--expresses _mine_. Never indeed before, to judge from what I have since heard upon inquiry, did a man, by variety of talents and variety of humours, contrive to place himself as the connecting link between orders of men so essentially repulsive of each other--as Mr. Wilson in this instance. 'Omnis Aristippum decuit color et status, et res.'