Indeed when a College Magnate takes the trouble to be polite, there is no man more splendidly courteous.

Immersed in their books and excluded from the world by the gravity of their occupations, these reverend men assume a solemn magnificence of compliment in which they rustle and swell as in their grand robes of state.

Those silks and brocades are not put on for all comers or every day.
When the two gentlemen had taken leave of the tutor in his study, and had returned to Mr.Buck's ante-room, or lecture-room, a very handsome apartment, turkey-carpeted, and hung with excellent prints and richly framed pictures, they found the tutor's servant already in waiting there, accompanied by a man with a bag full of caps and a number of gowns, from which Pen might select a cap and gown for himself, and the servant, no doubt, would get a commission proportionable to the service done by him.

Mr.Pen was all in a tremor of pleasure as the bustling tailor tried on a gown and pronounced that it was an excellent fit; and then he put the pretty college cap on, in rather a dandified manner and somewhat on one side, as he had seen Fiddicombe, the youngest master at Grey Friars, wear it.

And he inspected the entire costume with a great deal of satisfaction in one of the great gilt mirrors which ornamented Mr.Buck's lecture-room: for some of these college divines are no more above looking--glasses than a lady is, and look to the set of their gowns and caps quite as anxiously as folks do of the lovelier sex.