It is unnecessary to say that Colin won the prize on which he had set his heart. The record is extant in the University, to save his historian trouble; and, to be sure, nobody can be supposed to be ignorant on so important a point—at least nobody who is{353} anybody and has a character to support. He took a double first-class—as he had set his heart on doing—and thereby¹ obtained, as some great man once said in a speech, an equal standing² to that of a duke in English society. It is to be feared that Colin did not experience the full benefits of his elevation³; for, to be sure, such a dukedom is of a temporary character, and was scarcely likely to survive beyond his year. But the prize when it was won, and all the long details of the process of winning it, were not without their effect upon him. Colin, being still young and inexperienced, had, indeed, the idea that the possessor of such a distinction needed but to signify his august will, and straightway every possible avenue of advancement⁴ would open before him. But for that idea, the pride of carrying home his honours, and laying them at the feet of his native church and country, would have been much lessened⁵; and, to tell the truth, when the moment of triumph came, Colin yielded a little to the intoxication⁶, and lent his thoughts, in spite of himself, to those charmed voices of ambition which, in every allegory that ever was invented, exercise their siren influence on the young man at the beginning of his career. He waited to be wooed at that eventful moment. He had a vague idea at the bottom of his heart that the State and the Church, and the Bar and the Press, would all come forward open-armed to tempt⁷ the hero of the year; and he had nobly determined⁸ to turn a deaf ear to all their temptations, and cling to his natural

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