skilfully enticed him to row in the crew of which I was captain. Unfortunately, he became conscious one day that an hour before starting he had consumed a mutton-chop, a pint of porter, and an indefinite quantity of bread and cheese. From that hour he has been beset by an imaginary heart complaint, to which he ascribes all his ailments, and for which he naturally holds me responsible. When he feels an unaccountable headache, the morning after a Christmas feast, he complains pathetically of "that second boat; " he has never got it out of his constitution, he says, and some day it will be the death of him.

Why, my good fellow," I replied, “rowing is a fine healthy exercise."

"Healthy exercise! did it not kill seven of the University crew of 1851 in four years?"

Now in 1851 there was no University crew; and, moreover, the story has been told, to my knowledge, of every crew for the last twenty years.

By way of soothing him, I reply,—

"Yes, I know that to be true, for no less than five of the crew have severally assured me that each

of them was the only survivor; as for you, however, you are as sound as a bell.”

This last unpardonable insult naturally arouses his anger; he overwhelms me with stories of A. B. and C., whose deaths were clearly traceable to their exertions in boat-races. It is in vain that I reply that boating is certainly no antidote to existing consumption, nor to over-indulgence in whisky or mathematics; and that most of the cases mentioned are attributable to these causes.

I fear, indeed, that my position is not impregnable. A man may, and sometimes does, injure himself by excessive muscular effort, and doubtless rowing makes large demands upon the strength. I therefore fail to comfort my friend, who persists in his cheerful view till a couple of pills has restored his confidence. The only consolation that I can administer to anxious mothers is that an easy remedy exists. Adopt a good lowering system with our undergraduates; put them upon a strict prison diet, let them attend theological discourses of a gloomy tendency, substitute water-gruel for wine, and let them never walk on damp grass without changing

their shoes. You may soon reduce their temperaments to a level with those of the flabby students who saunter about in plaids through the streets of a German University town, haunting pastry-cooks' shops and smoking yard-long pipes. You may get rid of their high animal spirits, and perhaps make them fitter to teach in a Sunday-school. I will answer for it that they will not hurt themselves by rowing or running; whether they will develope any other undesirable propensities I cannot say. So long, however, as they are pampered up to their present pitch of physical vigour, they will continue to worship physical accomplishments with undue fervour, and will frequently seek to acquire them by undue exertions. In fact, the only way to have no martyrs is to have no saints; if you wish no boilers to burst, you had better keep the water below boiling point. For my part, I prefer our present system, just as I enjoy the pace of an English express train, though it increases the risk of accident.

The same remarks apply in some degree to the criticism of the other friend of whom I spoke. He was in old days my mathematical "coach." He

lived in a set of rooms, surrounded by a lively assortment of such works as Hymer's Conic Sections and De Morgan's Differential Calculus. His only ornament, a statuette of Newton (apparently in the act of making the remarkable discovery that you can't see through a plaster prism), kept watch over a wild sea of papers, covered with every variety of distorted ellipse and hyperbole and distracted entanglement of symbols. Every alternate day for three terms I had presented myself to be indoctrinated as the clock struck twelve. One day I was half-an-hour late.

"Where have you been?" he inquired.

"Down the river," I confessed in a moment of weakness.

"You mean that big sewer at the back of the college, I suppose."

I regret to say that this description of the noble Cam is so far true that the prosperity of rowing depends in no small degree upon the tribute derived from the town drains. If their contribution was diverted, an eight-oar would frequently find it hard to turn. I therefore admitted the justice of his remark.

"What?" he said, meanly adapting to the boatraces the sneer which an ancient dandy first levelled at the House of Commons,-"Does that go on still? You may count every day spent on the river as a place lost in the Tripos."

I do not mention this to argue against the venerable prejudice which asserts the incompatibility of muscular and intellectual exercise. The prejudice is, indeed, so far true as that few men can obtain eminence in both. We all remember the swell in Punch, who accounted for the excellence of his tie by the fact that he gave his whole mind to it; and now that our various sports have been carried to such perfection, those who pursue them with success have rarely mind enough left for distinguished success elsewhere. I recount the anecdote in order to show what must be a refreshing piece of news to some of my readers namely, that as in Oxford there were hundreds of voters who had never heard of the author of Vanity Fair, so in Cambridge many men pass their lives in complete isolation from rowing, cricket, and all other vanities of the kind. A commissioner of education always discovers a large