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OCR Rendition - approximate
Lehrjahre and Wanderjahre 171 J third, Boulton, from finding that he could not continue reading as he used to do without risking it. Fowell Buxton is quite knocked up and goes out in the poll, so does Bristed one of the first classics in our year, in fact the whole of Trinity is crank. Two other men Hotham and Edwards who read with Hopkins and at the same time were very superior classics (Hotham was Newcastle scholar at Eton, which is the highest classical honour they can get there) have both given up classics finding their two subjects are too much for them. It is quite melancholy too to see the men who stood high in the College, but did not get scholarships this year in May; they seem most of them quite broken spirited. Our man Stokes who was considered sure of being Senior Classic of his year, who used to be the merriest fellow going, lost his scholarship from not doing his Mathematics, he scarcely ever perpetrates a laugh and so also with the other men. Johnson also (Adele knows Mrs Johnson) is quite cut up. Joe Kay has left from illness produced by reading and won't come back till next term. I feel more convinced every day that if there is a thing more to be repressed than another it is certainly the system of competition for the satisfaction enjoyed by the gainers is very far from counterbalancing the pain it produces among the others'. I have not after all entered a boat club but patronise hockey and made my first debut yesterday at it. Montague Boulton is a very nice fellow and uncommonly sharp, I do not know what his chance is considered to be in Honours. Charley Buxton's and my debating club gets on famously. We have just enrolled Hallam2 (the youngest and 1 To go out in the Poll was according to Bristed (Five Years in an English University (1840-5), 3rd ed. p. 216) the course which many a man took at that date out of pride when from early idleness, ill health or other cause his degree would not be equal to what he thought his abilities deserved. Of the men mentioned Hotham must have finally taken a poll degree, but he was elected to a Trinity fellowship in 1845; Edwards was a very low wrangler; Stokes did not graduate at all or took a poll; Charles Astor Bristed was an American, he is referred to in the Memories, p. 77, and was a great friend of Henry Hallam. He gave an obituary notice of Hallam in the New York Literary 1Vorld, which is cited by Maine and Lushington and carries us back into the circle of the "Historical."-" He was the neatest extempore speaker I ever heard; his unprepared remarks were more precisely and elegantly worded than most men's elaborate written compositions. He had too a foresight and power of anticipation uncommon in such a youth, which enabled him to leave no salient points of attack and made his arguments very difficult to answer. He was always most liberal in his concessions to the other side and never committed the fault of claiming too much or proving too much. His was not a passionate oratory that carried his hearers away in a whirlwind, but a winning voice that stole away their hearts, the ars celare artem, the perfection of persuasiveness."-These lines are a striking testimonial to the powers of Hallam, but also indicate the nature of Galton's personal circle. Bristed was next but one to "wooden spoon" in the mathematical and second in the second class of the Classical Tripos in 1845. I have already referred to Fowell Buxton and the Kays. 2 This is the "Historical Society," and we may fairly assume it was founded by Galton and Buxton. In the Memoir of Henry Fitzmaurice Hallam by Henry Sumner Maine and Franklin Lushington, which is published in the Remains in Verse and Prose of Arthur Henry Hallam (new ed. 1862, p. lii), it is said of Henry Hallam: "In the first year of his College-life he became the virtual founder of the `Historical' debating 22-2
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