My first year at Oxford had been delightful,
as were also the three following, but there was to me something in the
throb of the great pulse of London which, as a stimulant, nay, an
excitant, of the mind, even Oxford could not rival.
For once I had plenty of leisure to enjoy the thrilling drama of life--a
drama too often dimmed by the cares, the business, or even the pleasures
of the onlooker. A Bar student is not overworked, and if he is not rich,
or socially sought after, he can find, as I did, plenty of time in which
to look around him and enjoy the scene. That exhilaration, that luxury
of leisurely circumspection may never return, or only, as happily in my
own case, with the grand climacteric. Once more I see and enjoy the
gorgeous drama by the Thames.
To walk every morning to the Temple or to Lincoln's Inn, where I was
reading in Chambers, was a feast. Then there were theatres, balls,
dances, dinners, and a thousand splendid sights to be enjoyed, for I was
then, as I have always been and am now, an indefatigable sightseer. I
would, I confess, to this day go miles to see the least promising of
curiosities or antiquities. "Who knows? it may be one of the wonders of
the world" has always been my order of the day.
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