He had an ample allowance, and facilities for spending it among pleasant companions in agreeable ways.

He had shot up to his full height, five feet eleven inches, and from his handsome features there shone those piercing dark eyes which riveted attention where-ever they were turned.

His loveless, cheerless boyhood was over, and the liberty of Oxford, which, even after the mild constraint of a public school, seems boundless, was to him the perfection of bliss.

He began to develop those powers of conversation which in after years gave him an irresistible influence over men and women, young and old.

Convinced that, like his brothers and sisters, he had but a short time to live, and having certainly been full of misery, he resolved to make the best of his time, and enjoy himself while he could.