Page:Life of Oliver Cromwell.pdf/4

 attainments in literature. He was removed from Huntingdon to Sydney Sussex College in Cambridge, where he led a disorderly and dissolute life; spending much of his time in the athletic amusements of cricket, foot-ball, cudgelling, and wrestling, in which he excelled, this disposition and manners at this periods were rough and blustering, and, consequently, but ill adapted to the acquisition of learning, or to calm and solitary study. The result was that he still made, but little proficiency after his father's death, which took place when in his eighteenth year, he was removed from Cambridge, and sent to study in Londen, where he paid as little attention as he had bestowed on the classics at Cambridge. Being in the recipt of a considerable income, bequeathed him by his father, he abandoned himself to every species of dissipation, drinking, gaming, and certain yet more immoral pursuits. When about twenty years of age, Cromwell returned a finished rake to the place of his nativity, where he for some time continued the irregular habits which he had acquired in the capital. He bullied and fought with his companions on the slightest provocation, -played many thousand mischievous pranks,- was quarrelsome and turbulent,-and the terror of all the inn-keepers in the neighbourhood, whose windows, he made it a rule to breaks when any of them had the audacity to crave him for payment of the sums which he had run up; in short, Cromwell, at this period of his liſe, was, in every particular, a downright blackguard.

The scene, however, was soon to change. The sound judgment and strong mind of Oliver, aided by the admonitions of a fond mother, early exhibited to him the folly of his conduct. He began