94 THE SCORN OF SCORN. across the court, before going in. While doing so, he met De Vayne, and in his company suddenly found himself vis-à-vis with his old enemy Brogten. "Hem!" whispered Brogten to his companion, "the sizars are getting on. A sizar and a viscount arm in arm!" Julian only heard enough of this sentence to be aware that it was highly insolent; and the flush on De Vayne's cheek showed that he too had caught something of its meaning. "Never mind that boor's rudeness," he said. "I feel more than honored to be in the sizar's company. How admirably quiet you are, Julian, under such conduct!" "I try to be; not always with success, though," he answered, as his breast swelled, and his lip quivered with indignation. "Scorn!-to be scorned by one that I scorn: Is that a matter to make me fret? Is that a matter to cause regret ?'— Stop! let's come into chapel." They went into chapel together. De Vayne walked into the noblemen's seats; and Julian, hot and angry, and with the words, "Scorn!-to be scorned by one that I scorn," still ringing in his ears, strode up the whole length of the chapel to the obscure corner set apart is it not very needlessly set apart?-for the sizars' use. St. Werner's chapel on a Sunday evening is a moving sight. Five hundred men in surplices thronging the chapel from end to end-the very flower of English youth, in manly beauty, in strength, in race, in courage, in mind-all kneeling side by side, bound together in a common bond of union by the grand historic associations of that noble place-all mingling their voices together with the trebles of the choir and the thundermusic of the organ. This is a spectacle not often equaled; and to take a share in it as one for whose sake, in part, it has been established, is a privilege not to be forgotten. The music, the devotion, the spirit of the place, smoothed the swelling thoughts of Julian's troubled heart. "Are we not all brethren? Hath not one Father begotten us?" Such began to be the burden of his thoughts, rather than the old "Scorn!-to be scorned by one that I scorn.' And when the glorious tones of the anthem ceased, and the calm steady voice of the chaplain was heard alone, uttering in the sudden hush the grand overture to the noble prayer "O Lord, our heavenly Father, high and mighty, King of kings, Lord of lords, the only Ruler of princes, who dost from thy throne behold all the dwellers upon earth, then the last demon of wrath was exorcised, and Julian thought to himself "No; from henceforth I scorn no one, and am indifferent alike to the proud man's scorn and the base man's sneer." The two incidents that we have narrated made Julian fear that his position as a sizar would be one of continual annoyance. He afterwards gratefully acknowledged that in such a supposition he was quite mistaken. Never again while he remained a sizar did he hear the slightest unkind allusions to the circum stance, and but for the external regulations imposed by the college, he might even have forgotten the fact. Those regulations, especially the hall arrangements, were indeed sufficiently disagreeable at times. It could not be pleasant to dine in a hall which had just been left by hundreds of men, and to make the meal amid the prospect of slovenly servants employed in the emptying of wineglasses and the ligurrition of dishes, sometimes even in passages of coquetry or noisy civilities, on the interchange of which the presence of these undergraduates seemed to impose but little check. These things may be better now, and in spite of them Julian felt hearty reason to be grateful for the real kindness of the St. Werner's authorities. In other respects he found that the fact of his being a sizar made no sort of difference in his position; he found that the majority of men either knew or cared nothing about it, and sought his society on terms of the most unquestioned equality, for the sake of the pleasure which his company afforded them, and the thoughts which it enabled them to ventilate or interchange. CHAPTER VIII. STUDY AND IDLENESS. "Then what golden hours were for us, Down the deep iambic lines, And the rolling anapostic Curled like vapor over shrines!" E. BARRETT BROWNING. THE incentives which lead young men to work are as various as the influences which tend to make them idle. One toils on, however hopelessly, from a sense of duty, from a desire to please his parents, and satisfy the requirements of the place; another because he has been well trained into habits of work, and has a notion of educating the mind; a third because he has set his heart on a fellowship; a fourth, because he is intensely ambitious, and looks on a good degree as the steppingstone to literary or political honors. The fewest perhaps pursue learning for her own sake, and study out of a simple eagerness to know what may be known, as the best means of cultivating their intellectual powers for the attainment of at least a personal solution of those great problems, the existence of which they have already begun to realize. But of this rare class was 98 THE WORLD OF BOOKS. Julian Home. He studied with an ardor and a passion before which difficulties vanished, and in consequence of which he seemed to progress not the less surely, because it was with great strides. For the first time in his life, Julian found himself entirely alone in the great wide realm of literature-alone, to wander at his own will, almost without a guide. And joyously did that brave young spirit pursue its way-now resting in some fragrant glen, and by some fountain mirror, where the boughs which bent over him were bright with blossom and rich with fruit-now plunging into some deep thicket, where at every step he had to push aside the heavy branches and tangled weeds—and now climbing with toilful progress some steep and rocky hill, on whose summit, hardly attained, he could rest at last, and gaze back over perils surmounted and precipices passed, and mark the thunder rolling over the valleys, or gaze on kingdoms full of peace and beauty, slumbering in the broad sunshine beneath his feet. Julian read for the sake of knowledge, and because he intensely enjoyed the great authors, whose thoughts he studied. He had read parts of Homer, parts of Thucydides, parts of Tacitus, parts of the tragedians, at school, but now he had it in his power to study a great author entire, and as a whole. Never before did he fully appreciate the "thunderous lilt" of Greek epic, the touching and voluptuous tenderness of Latin elegy, the regal pomp of history, the gorgeous and philosophic mystery of the old dramatic fables. Never before had he learnt to gaze on "the bright countenance of truth, in the mild and dewy air of delightful studies." Those who decry classical education, do so from inexperience |