In describing the intellectual and the muscular class of undergraduate, I have chiefly confined myself to those who seek glory on the river and in the mathematical tripos. These are, in fact, the most characteristic products of our soil. Plants of different origin are springing up around them with more or less vitality. New studies and new sports are being gradually introduced to diversify the former monotony of our pursuits; but they have not checked the vigorous growth of the older forms, nor prevented them from still affording the purest type of the genuine Cambridge man.

It is not, however, to be supposed that all our energy is exhausted in producing mathematicians and rowing men, nor even in producing all the varieties of the two classes at the head of which these enthusiasts are respectively presumed to stand. There is always some vagrant unfixed ability which cannot show off its paces within the arena chalked out by official examiners; there are, therefore, a good many men who consider the recognition which they do receive to be altogether inadequate to their merits. We all know the very unpleasant individual who passes his life without ever getting his talents duly appreciated. He has a tendency to invent new theories of the universe, to write life dramas, or to make what the reporters call “lucid expositions” of new theories of political economy to philosophical societies.