CHAPTER VII. THE SCORN OF SCORN. "And not a man, for being simply man, Hath any honor, but honor for those honors VERY different in all respects were Julian's renconters with others of his old school-fellows. There were some, indeed, among them who had left Harton while they were still in low forms, and some whose tastes and pursuits were so entirely different from his own, that it was hardly likely that he should maintain any other intercourse with them than such as was demanded by a slight acquaintance. But of Bruce, at any rate, it might have been expected that he would see rather more than proved to be the case. Bruce, as having been head of the school during the period when Julian was a monitor, had been thrown daily into his company, and, as inmates of the same house, they had acted together in the thousand little scenes which diversify the bright and free monotony of a schoolboy's life. But the first fortnight passed by, and Bruce had not called on Julian, and as they were on different "sides," they had not chanced to meet, either in lecture-room or elsewhere. Julian, not knowing whether his position as sizar would make any difference in Bruce's estimation of him, had naturally left him to take the initiative in calling; while Bruce, on the other hand, always a little jealous of his brilliant contemporary, and not too anxious to be familiar with a sizar, pretended to himself that it was as much Julian's place as his to be first in calling. Hence it was that, for the first fortnight, the two did not happen to come across each other. Meanwhile Bruce also had made many fresh acquaintances. His reputation for immense wealth and considerable talent-his dashing, easy manner-his handsome person and elaborate style of dress, attracted notice, and very soon threw him into the circle of all the young fashionables of St. Werner's. His style of life cannot be better described than by saying that he affected the fine gentleman. Hardly a day had passed during which he had not been at some large breakfast or wine party, or formed one of a select little body of supping aristocrats. He did very little work, and pretended to do none, (for Bruce was a first-rate specimen of the never-open-a-book genus,) although at unexpected hours he took care to get up the lectureroom subjects sufficiently well to make a display when he was put on. Even in this he was unsuccessful, for scholarship cannot be acquired per saltum, and Mr. Serjeant, the lecturer on his side, looked on him with profound contempt, as a puppy who was all the more offensive from pretending to some knowledge. He told him that he might distinguish himself by hard, steady work, but would never do so without infinitely more pains than he took the trouble to apply. His quiet 8 and caustic strictures, and the easy sarcasm with which he would allow Bruce to flourish his way through a passage, and then go through it himself, pointing out how utterly Bruce had "hopped with airy and fastidious levity" above all the nicer shades of meaning, and slurred over his ignorance of a difficulty by some piece of sonorous nonsense, made him peculiarly the object of the young man's disgust. But though Mr. Serjeant wounded his vanity, the irony of "a musty old don," as Bruce contemptuously called him, was amply atoned for by the compliments of the fast young admirers whom Bruce soon gathered round him, and some of whom were always to be found after hall time sipping his claret or lounging in his gorgeous rooms. To them Bruce's genius was incontestably proved by the faultless evenness with which he parted his hair behind, the dapperness of his boots, and the merit of his spotless shirts. Sir Rollo Bruce, Vyvyan's father, was a man of no particular family, who had been knighted on a deputation, and contrived to glitter in the most splendid circles of London society. His magnificent entertainments, his exquisite appointments, his apparently fabulous resources, were a sufficient passport into the saloons of dukes; and although ostensibly Sir Rollo had nothing to live on but his salary as the chairman of a bank, nobody who had the entrée of his house cared particularly to inquire into the sources of his wealth. Vyvyan imitated his father in his expensive tastes, and cultivated, with vulgar assiduity, the society of the noblemen at his college. In a short time he knew them all, and all of them had been at his rooms except a young Lord De Vayne, of whom we shall hear more hereafter, and whose retiring manners made him shrink with dislike from Bruce's fawning 'amiliarity. The sizars at St. Werner's do not dine at the same hour as the rest of the undergraduates, but the hour after, and their dinner consists of the dishes which have previously figured on the fellows' table. It seems to me that the time may come when the authorities of that royal foundation will see reason to regret so unnecessary an arrangement, the relic of a long obsolete, and always undesirable system. Many of St. Werner's most distinguished alumni have themselves sat at the sizars' table, and if any of them were blessed or cursed with sensitive dispositions, they will not be dead to the justice of these remarks. The sizars are, by birth and education, invariably, so far as I know, the sons of gentlemen, and perhaps most often of clergymen whose means prevent them from bearing unassisted the heavy burden of university expenses. After a short time many of these sizars become scholars, and eventually a large number of them win for themselves the honors of a fellowship. Why put on these young students a gratuitous indignity? why subject them to the unpleasant remarks which some are quite coarse enough to make on the subject? The authorities of St. Werner's are full of real courtesy and kindness, and that the arrangement is not intended as an indignity I am well aware; it is, as I have said, the accidental fragment of an obsolete period—a period when scholars dined on penny piece of beef," and slept two or three in a room at the foot of the fellows' beds. All honor to "a 88 PER ASPERA AD ASTRA. St. Werner's; all honor to the great, and the wise, and the learned, and the noble whom she has sent forth into all lands; all honor to the bravery and the truthfulness of her sons; all honor to the profound scholars, and able teachers, and eloquent orators who preside at her councils; she is a queen of colleges, and may wield her scepter with a strong hand and a proud. But are there not some among her subjects who are deaf to the sounds of calm advice?-some who are so blind as to love her faults and prop up her abuses?—some who daub her walls with the untempered mortar of their blind prejudice, and treat every one as an enemy who would aid in removing here and there a bent pillar, and here and there a crumbling stone?* And now let all defenders of present institutions, however bad they may be-let all violent supporters of their old mumpsimus against any new sumpsimus whatever, listen to a conversation among some undergraduates. It may convince them, or it may not-I cannot tell; but I know that it had a powerful influence on me. Bruce was standing in the butteries, where he had just been joined by Lord Fitzurse and Sir John D'Acres, who by virtue of their titles-certainly not by any other virtue-sat among reverend professors and learned doctors at the high table, far removed from the herd of common undergraduates. With the three were Mr. Boodle and Mr. Tulk, (the "Mister" is given them in the college lists out of respect for the long purses * These words were written some time ago. I trust that since then all causes of offense, if they ever existed, have long been forgiven and forgotten. |