CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIFTH. MEMORY THE BOOK OF GOD. "At Trompyngtoun, nat fer fra Cantebrigge, It THERE is little which admits of external record in Julian's life at this period of his university career. was the usual uneventful, quiet life of a studious Camford undergraduate. Happy it was beyond any other time, except perhaps a few vernal days of boyhood, but it was unmarked by any incidents. He read, and rowed, and went to lectures, and worked at classics, mathematics, and philosophy, and dropped in sometimes to a debate or a private-business squabble at the Union, and played racquets, fives, and football, and talked eagerly in hall and men's rooms over the exciting topics of the day, and occasionally went to wine or to breakfast with a don, and (absorbed in some grand old poet or historian) lingered by his lamp over the lettered page from chapel-time till the grey dawn, when he would retire to pure and refreshful sleep, humming a tune out of very cheerfulness. Happy days, happy friendships, happy study, happy recreation, happy exemption from the cares of life! The bright visions of a scholar, the bright hilarity of a youth, the bright acquaintanceship with many united by a brotherly bond within those grey walls, were so many mingled influences that ran together "like warp and woof" in the web of a singularly enviable life. And every day he felt that he was knowing more, and acquiring a strength and power which should fit him hereafter for the more toilsome business and sterner struggles of common life. Well may old Cowley exclaim “O pulcræ sine luxu œdes, vitœque decoræ Splendida paupertas ingenuusque pudor!” All the reading men of his year were now anxiously occupied in working for the St. Werner's scholarships. They were the blue ribbon of the place. In value they were not much more than £50 a year, but as the scholars had an honourable distinctive seat both in hall and chapel, and as from their ranks alone the Fellows were selected, all the most intelligent and earnest men used their best efforts to obtain them on the earliest possible occasion. At the scholars' tables were generally to be found the most distinguished among the alumni of St. Werner's. Julian still moved chiefly among his old friends, although he had a large acquaintance, and by no means "PEREUNT ET IMPUTANTUR." 309 confined himself to the society of particular classes. But De Vayne's illness made a sad gap in the circle of his most intimate associates, and he was not yet sufficiently recovered to attempt a correspondence. Among the dons, Julian began to like Mr. Admer more and more, and found that his cynicism of manner was but the result of disappointed ambition and unsteady aims, while his heart was sound and right. Kennedy, as well as Julian, had always hoped to gain a scholarship at his first trial, but now, with only one term left him to read in, his chance seemed to fade away to nothing. Poor fellow, he had returned with the strongest possible intention of working, and of abandoning at once and for ever all objectionable acquaintances and all dangerous ways. Hourly the sweet face of Violet looked in upon his silent thoughts, and filled him with shame as he thought of lost opportunities and wasted hours. "Kennedy," said Mr. Admer, "how can you be so intolerably idle? I saw some of your Christmas papers, and they were wholly unworthy of your abilities." "I know it well. But what could you expect? The Pindar I had read once over with a crib; the morality I had not looked at; the mathematics I did not touch." "But what excuse have you? I really feel quite angry with you. You are wholly throwing away everything. What have you to shew for your time and money? only think, my dear fellow, that an opportunity 310 66 VIDEO MELIORA." like this comes only once in life, and soon your college days will be over with nothing to remember." "True, too true." "Well, I am glad that you see and own it. I began to fear that you were one of that contemptible would-be fine gentleman class that affects forsooth to despise work as a thing unworthy of their eminence." "No, Mr. Admer," said Kennedy, "my idleness springs from very different causes.' "And then these Brogtens and people, whom you are so often seen with; which of them do you think understands you, or can teach you anything worth knowing? and which of them do you think you will ever care to look back to as acquaintances in after days?" "Not one of them. I hate the whole set." "And then, my dear Kennedy-for I speak to you out of real goodwill-I would say it with the utmost delicacy, but you must know that your name has suffered from the company you frequent." "Can I not see it to be so?" he answered moodily; no need to tell me that, when I read it in the faces of nearly every man I see. The men have not yet forgiven me De Vayne's absence, though really and truly that sin does not lie at my door. Except Julian and Lillyston there is hardly a man I respect, who does not look at me with averted eyes. Of course Grayson and the dons detest me to a man; but I don't care for them." 66 Then, you mysterious fellow, seeing all this so clearly, why do you suffer it to be so?" 66 AS A MAN SOWETH." 311 Kennedy only shook his head; already there had begun to creep over him a feeling of despair; already it seemed to him as though the gate of heaven were a lion-haunted portal guarded by a fiery sword. For he had soon found that his intense resolutions to do right met with formidable checks. There are two stern facts-facts which it does us all good to remember -which generally lie in the path of repentance, and look like crouching lions to the remorseful soul. First, the fact that we become so entangled by habit and circumstance, so enslaved by association and custom, that the very atmosphere around us seems to have become impregnated with a poison which we cannot cease to breathe; secondly, the fact that "in the physical world there is no forgiveness of sins;" to abandon our evil courses is not to escape the punishment of them, and although we may have relinquished them wholly in the present, we cannot escape the consequences of the past. Remission of sins is not the remission of their results. The very monsters we dread, and the dread of which terrifies us into the consideration of our ways, glare upon us out of the future darkness, as large, as terrible, as irresistible, whether we approach them on the road to ruin, or whether we seem to fly from them through the hardly attained and narrow wicket of genuine repentance. Both these difficulties acted with their full force on the mind of Kennedy. His error was its own punishment, and its heaviest punishment. The hours he had lost were lost so utterly, that he could never hope to |