Page:Biographia Hibernica volume 2.djvu/337

This page needs to be proofread.

HUTCHINSON. 333 of years previous to the presidency of Mr. Hutchinson, gave facilities for the wildest irregularity in the conduct of the students. The taverns, the billiard rooms, the gaining tables, and places of still worse resort, were crouded every night with young gownsmen, and even those who, obedient to the last summons of the ten o'clock bell, hurried within the gates, for fear of lecture or rustication, afterwards, instead of retiring to bed, scaled the college walls, and returned to their nocturnal haunts, where, elevated with wine, they sallied forth from those orgies, scoured the streets in tipsey groupes, broke the lamps, beat the watch men, attacked a l l whom they met, regardless o f age, sex, o r condition. They were a t open war with the middling and lower orders o f citizens; perpetually i n midnight broils with butchers' boys, city apprentices, and others, who frequently mustered i n groups, either for self-defence, o r t o avenge some former outrage, upon the collegians, who made common cause against a l l classes but their own. Hevegh for Trinity! was a t once their parole and watch word; and scarcely a night passed without some formidable fray, o r mischievous frolic o f their contrivance. But the night which followed their day o f half-yearly examinations, was always a night o f terror t o a l l who ventured into the streets i n the vicinity o f the college. On this night they paid off their scores o n the common enemy. They sallied forth from the taverns, heated b y wine, and paraded the streets, with bludgeons and drawn swords, assaulting a l l they met. They attacked the theatre, knocked down the door-keepers, forced their way t o the galleries, pit, boxes, and even t o the stage and green-room; put the whole audience and corps dramatique t o the route; and then rushed forth again t o wreak their vengeance o n their de voted enemies, the watchmen, chairmen, and hackney coachmen, and a l l who ventured t o oppose their career. I n these desperate conflicts, many wounds and fractures were interchanged, and not unfrequently lives lost. Such was the state o f things u p t o the time o f Mr. Hutchinson's induction t o the academic chair; and against this system