Of other tastes, habits, and peculiarities of Cambridge men, I do not know that there is much to be said, beyond what may have already been inferred by the reader in the course

and the same first initial, which was enough to make some confusion probable, but their habit of omitting the middle initial which distinguished them made it ten times worse, and they were continually being mistaken for each other.

Never address a letter to an Englishman as " Mr. John Brown" or "Mr. Brown," unless you want to insult him, but always "John Brown Esq." or ". Brown Esq." if you do not know his Christian name. It makes an important practical difference to an Englishman, by the way, whether he is legally rated as " Esquire" or "Gentleman," the former class being exempt from some burthensome jury duties to which the latter is subject.

Talking of addresses reminds me of a queer style some of the Dons had of beginning a note or letter to a pupil, "My dear Mr. So and So," giving the recipient an impression for the moment that he was honored by some lady's correspondence. Probably they intended something patronizing by it; a friend of mine who received a note beginning thus, commenced his answer with the same form, and the Don was much disconcerted.

If an Englishman puts "Mr." on his card, he does not put "Sir" into every sentence of his conversation, as some of our people do. I have sometimes wondered whether this continual introduction of the vocative was a polite Gallicism (since the French use "Monsieur" about as frequently in conversation), or whether it springs from our debatingsociety and public meeting habits, regarding every one addressed as a president or chairman to be made a speech at. It certainly has a very stiff effect at all times, and sometimes a very ludicrous one. I have known southern and western gentlemen whose conversation seemed to consist of successive enunciations of "Sir !" with a few words between to connect them.

of this work. They are perhaps rather less conventional than the general run of Englishmen, and pass Sunday in a more Continental manner. They spend little in personal equipment, and I do not remember ever hearing a remark made of or to a man on the subject of his dress. They are generally very gentlemanly in their behavior-unless they happen. to be drunk, and some of them even when they happen to be. They have an accurate sense of public propriety in most cases. You will not see a tipsy student out of doors in Cambridge oftener than in New Haven. You will never hear a man swear in broad daylight. It is not considered manly or gentlemanly to walk in front of the College buildings uttering monstrous oaths, as many of our southern students consider it. Nor will you ever hear a man openly avow himself a disbeliever in the truths of Christianity. Some may say that this does not necessarily involve a panegyric on the Cambridge students, and only arises from their want of thought on the subject, a proposition to which I do not assent, believing that as a general rule there are no men who take their opinions on less evidence and investigation than infidels, and that men who, like poor John Sterling, refine away all their belief by over-speculation are rare exceptions.

ON

THE STATE OF MORALS AND RELIGION IN CAMBRIDGE.

A theologian in liquor is not a respectable object.-THACKERAY.

I APPROACH this part of my subject with very great hesitation and reluctance. In the first place, it is not pleasant, after having said many things in praise of an institution to which one is warmly attached, to be obliged to say anything in strong and positive dispraise of it. But there is a much stronger reason for this feeling on my part. The very fact of a man's writing upon matters of religion and morality looks like his setting up a claim to be a particularly moral and religious man. Any approach to such a claim may well provoke severe scrutiny, and there are some direct confessions as well as indirect admissions in the course of this book which will not bear any very rigid test. In admitting this I do not allude to any places where the Latex Lyaeus is spoken of as an ordinary beverage and a promoter of festivity; in other words, where drinking wine is mentioned, and not mentioned as a sin, although well aware that many good people would consider me, as a necessary consequence of this, little better than an infidel, and totally disqualified from giving evidence on ethical or theological points. Allowing such persons all credit for sincerity, and wishing them a little more charity; honoring them for their temperance, and

trusting that they may learn to extend a little of it into other matters--their judgment of others, for instance-I cannot accept their primary article of faith, or put myself under their jurisdiction. There are other things which touch me more nearly, such as having walked round an oath and taken a degree under false pretences-a piece of Jesuitism for which I shall never forgive myself, and of which no other person can judge more hardly than I myself do. Besides this obvious instance, there are doubtless others of commission and omission, in the facts told and in the way of telling them, which may make me appear a very Catiline complaining of sedition if I do anything which resembles sitting in judgment upon others.

Yet it is manifestly impossible to pass over this branch of our subject sicco pede. Admitting, as indeed we have already laid down, that the special intent and primary idea of a University is to educate liberally the intellect, still the moral and religious condition of so many young men—the pick of their generation too, in more ways than one--must needs be a very important consideration; and when we take still further into account that this University is one of the great sources whence the National Church derives its teachers, the absolute necessity of saying something on this point must be apparent. No sense of personal deficiency shall prevent me from speaking out. Some suspicions might be brought on both myself and my Alma Mater by silence-on myself as utterly indifferent to the state of morals in a place so long as the intellect was cultivated and the animal well

provided for; on her, as allowing a state of things too bad to be mentioned and in regard to which silence was the safest defence.

A young man passing as I did from an American College immediately to an English University, will certainly be astonished at some and shocked at many of the differences he notices in the habits of those about him from what he has been used to consider as the proper practice of students. That decanters and glasses should be among the articles directly recommended by the tutor's servant who assists him in furnishing his room-without any objection, too, from the Evangelical friend who assists him in his purchases; that he should be able to order supper for himself and friends out of the College kitchen, and his College tutor, so far from appearing as a bird of ill omen to mar the banquet, will perhaps play a good knife and fork at it himself-all this seems odd to him at first, but he readily comprehends that the system is one suited to the more advanced age of the students, and one which by refusing to make decent merriment a malum prohibitum within the College walls, deprives them of excuse for frequenting external haunts of dissipation. By-and-by, however, as his experience increases, he finds that this liberty is often abused into the most shameful license. The reading men are obliged to be tolerably temperate, but among the "rowing " men there is a great deal of absolute drunkenness at dinner and supper parties. And, after making all allowance for the peculiar climate which admits of stronger and more copious potations than ours, and the