Charles Kingsley; His Letters and Memories of His Life (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. 1838?42. Aged 19?23. Life at Cambridge?Visit to Oxfordshire?Undergraduate Days?Decides to take Orders?Takes his Degree?Correspondence?Letters from Cambridge Friends. Ik the autumn of 1838 Charles Kingsley left King's College, London, and went up to Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he soon gained a scholarship, being first in his year in the May Examinations, and in the joy of his heart he writes home: ? Magdalene College, May 31, 1839. You will be delighted to hear that I am first in classics and mathematics also, at the examinations, which has not happened in the College for several years. I shall bring home prizes, and a decent portion of honor?the King's College men (K.C. London) are all delighted. I am going to stay up here a few days longer if you will let me. Mr. Wand has offered to help me with my second year's subjects, so I shall read conic sections and the spherical trigonometry very hard while I am here. I know you and mamma will be glad to hear of my success, so you must pardon the wild- ness of my letter, for I am so happy I hardly know what to say. You know I am not accustomed to be successful. I am going to-day to a great fishing party at Sir Charles Wale's, at Shelford. The prize he refers to was a fine edition of Plato in eleven volumes. His selection of such a book, says Mr. Mynors Bright, an undergraduate friend, afterwards senior tutor of Magdalene, in a recent letter to the Editor, Speaks well for his judgment and taste. I recollect one of the examiners, a Fellow of the College, telling me, that whatever papers Kingsley sent up to any examination always showed marks of talent. As you must know, he was always of an excitabletemperament. I recollect his telling me that he first began to smoke at Cambridge, and that ...