English boys remain at school until the term boy is hardly applicable to them (according to our notions, at least), and the academy-prospectus designation of “young gentlemen” becomes more appropriate; that is to say till eighteen or nineteen years of age. It is impossible that for youths of that stature (and they grow faster in England than in our Northern States) the school discipline should not be relaxed a little from its extreme strictness; still even for them it is pretty severe. From this state of close restraint they are suddenly thrown into a condition of almost entire freedom, in which they can go where they like, order what they please, and do almost anything they please, only about two hours and a half of their daily time being demanded by the college authorities, and from midnight till seven in the morning the only period when they must be in their rooms or lodging-houses. Tradesmen of all sorts give them unlimited tick; they can fill their wardrobes with clothes and their cellars with wines; they may gratify the “small vice” of smoking, and any greater vices they are so unfortunate as to have, provided they do not openly outrage public decorum.

Having had a little more worldly experience than most Cambridge Freshmen, and being moreover fortified by a somewhat more refined taste (occasionally a valuable auxiliary to a man's principles) I kept clear without difficulty of all such boyish excesses.