His first thought, then, was one of pleasure at having been sought out by one who seemed to be just the sort of friend he would like to have. He contrasted our hero with the few men with whom he generally lived, and for some of whom he had a high esteem—whose only idea of exercise was a two hours’ constitutional walk in the afternoons, and whose life was chiefly spent over books and behind sported oaks—and felt that this was more of a man after his own heart. Then came doubts whether his new friend would draw back when he had been up a little longer, and knew more of the place. At any rate he had said and done nothing to tempt him; “if he pushes the acquaintance—and I think he will—it will be because he likes me for myself. And I can do him good too, I feel sure,” he went on, as he ran over rapidly his own life for the last three years. “Perhaps he won’t flounder into all the sloughs that I have had to drag through; he will get too much of the healthy, active life up here for that, which I never had; but some of them he must get into. All the companionship of boating and cricketing, and wine-parties and supper-parties, and all the reading in the world won’t keep him from many a long hour of mawkishness, and discontent, and emptiness of heart; he feels that already himself. Am I sure of that, though? I may be only reading myself into him. At any rate, why should I have helped to trouble him before the time? Was that a friend’s part? Well, he _must_ face it, and the sooner the better perhaps. At any rate it is done. But what a blessed thing if one can only help a youngster like this to fight his way through the cold clammy atmosphere which is always hanging over him, and ready to settle down on him—can help to keep some living faith in him, that the world, Oxford and all, isn’t a respectable piece of machinery set going some centuries back! Ah! it’s an awful business, that temptation to believe, or think you believe, in a dead God. It has nearly broken my back a score of times. What are all the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil to this? It includes them all. Well, I believe I can help him, and, please God, I will, if he will only let me; and the very sight of him does me good; so I won’t believe we went down the lasher together for nothing.” XC. Don’t let reformers of any sort think that they are going really to lay hold of the working boys and young men of England by any educational grapnel whatever, which hasn’t some _bona fide_ equivalent for the games of the old country “veast” in it; something to put in the place of the back-swording and wrestling and racing; something to try the muscles of men’s bodies, and the endurance of their hearts, and to make them rejoice in their strength. In all the new-fangled comprehensive plans which I see, this is all left out: and the consequence is, that your great Mechanics’ Institutes end in intellectual priggism, and your Christian Young Men’s Societies in religious Pharisaism.