Description

In the Michaelmas term after leaving school, Tom Brown received a
summons from the authorities, and went up to matriculate at St.
Ambrose's College, Oxford, He presented himself at the college
one afternoon, and was examined by one of the tutors, who carried
him, and several other youths in like predicament, up to the
Senate House the next morning. Here they went through the usual
forms of subscribing to the articles, and otherwise testifying
their loyalty to the established order of things, without much
thought perhaps, but in very good faith nevertheless. Having
completed the ceremony, by paying his fees, our hero hurried back
home, without making any stay in Oxford. He had often passed
through it, so that the city had not the charm of novelty for
him, and he was anxious to get home; where, as he had never spent
an autumn away from school till now, for the first time in his
life he was having his fill of hunting and shooting.He had left school in June, and did not go up to reside at Oxford
till the end of the following January. Seven good months; during
a part of which he had indeed read for four hours or so a week
with the curate of the parish, but the residue had been
exclusively devoted to cricket and field sports. Now, admirable
as these institutions are, and beneficial as is their influence
on the youth of Britain, it is possible for a youngster to get
too much of them. So it had fallen out with our hero. He was a
better horseman and shot, but the total relaxation of all the
healthy discipline of school, the regular hours and regular work
to which he had been used for so many years, had certainly thrown
him back in other ways. The whole man had not grown; so that we
must not be surprised to find him quite as boyish, now that we
fall in with him again, marching down to St. Ambrose's with a
porter wheeling his luggage after him on a truck as when we left
him at the end of his school career.Tom was in truth beginning to feel that it was high time for him
to be getting to regular work again of some sort. A landing place
is a famous thing, but it is only enjoyable for a time by any
mortal who deserves one at all. So it was with a feeling of
unmixed pleasure that he turned in at the St. Ambrose gates, and
inquired of the porter what rooms had been allotted to him within
those venerable walls.
While the porter consulted his list, the great college sundial,
over the lodge, which had lately been renovated, caught Tom's
eye. The motto underneath, _"Pereunt et imputantur,"_ stood out,
proud of its new gilding, in the bright afternoon sun of a frosty
January day: which motto was raising sundry thoughts in his
brain, when the porter came upon the right place in his list, and
directed him to the end of his journey: No. 5 staircase, second
quadrangle, three pair back. In which new home we shall leave him to install himself, while we endeavor to give the reader some notion of the college itself.