Cuthbert Bede

“ Green, yet clear and distinct through all there ran
"The stream-like windings of that glorious street,"
[1]
to which one of the first critics of the age [2] has given this high testimony of praise: "The High Street of Oxford has not its equal in the whole world."
Mr. Green could not, of course, leave Oxford until he had seen his beloved son in that elegant cap and preposterous gown which constitute the present academical dress of the Oxford undergraduate; and to assume which, with a legal right to the same, matriculation is first necessary. ”

“ Mr. Verdant Green could only gasp his declaration, "that no foreign prince, person, prelate, state, or potentate, hath, or ought to have, any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence, or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this realm." When he had sufficiently recovered his presence of mind, Mr. Verdant Green inserted his name in the University books as "Generosi filius natu maximus"; and then signed his name to the Thirty-nine Articles,—though he did not endanger his matriculation, as Theodore Hook did, by professing his readiness to sign forty if they wished it! ”

“ Young ladies and unprotected females were found in abundance, dressed in all the engaging variety of light spring dresses; and, as may be supposed, our hero attracted a great deal of their attention, and afforded them no small amusement. But the unusual and terrific appearance of a spectacled gownsman with a cane produced the greatest alarm among the juveniles, who imagined our freshman to be a new description of beadle or Bogy, summoned up by the exigencies of the times to preserve a rigorous discipline among the young people ”