out any academical subscription, without any Episcopal ordination I was left, by light of my catechism, to grope my way to the Chapel and to the Communion-table, where I was admitted, without question as to how far, or by what means, I might be qualified to receive the sacrament."
The unprejudiced reader, in pronouncing between scholar and school, unless he feels that the scholar greatly exaggerates, will probably lay the onus of "The Decline and Fall" to the fault of them both!
John Wilson, better known as "Christopher North," was graduated from Magdalen in 1807. He was a Gentleman Commoner, and he made a most decided mark for himself, not only with his head but with his heels, and his arms, and with the rest of his physical anatomy. He was, even at college, what is called "a character;" but a fine, manly, breezy, intellectual, enthusiastic character, as he was throughout life. He boxed, he ran, he rode, he walked, he sculled, he dived, he swam, he skated; he tramped from Oxford to London in a night; and he jumped the Cherwell where it was twenty-three feet in width.
In 1806, while he was doing all these extraordinary physical things, he set himself down, with no whip-cord or wet towel around his head, and calmly wrote a poem on "The Study of Greek and
