Alfred retired, and learned
from the porter that the college was not full. He sighed deeply, and the
sickening feeling grew on him; an ineradicable stigma seemed upon him,
and Mrs. Dodd was no worse than the rest of the world then; every mother
in England would approve her resolutions. He wandered about the scenes of
his intellectual triumphs: he stood in the great square of the schools, a
place ugly to unprejudiced eyes, but withal somewhat grand and inspiring,
especially to scholars who have fought their keen and bloodless battles
there. He looked at the windows and gilt inscription of the Schola
Metaphysices, in which he had met the scholars of his day and defeated
them for the Ireland. He wandered into the theatre, and eyed the rostrum,
whence he had not mumbled, but recited, his Latin prize poem with more
than one thunder of academic applause: thunder compared with which Drury
Lane's us a mere cracker. These places were unchanged; but he, sad
scholar, wandered among them as if he was a ghost, and all these were
stony phantoms of an intellectual past, never, never to return.
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