text:  I never got up to the asses' bridge and certainly could not have passed it if I had; so in a very disconsolate frame of mind I took leave of the university after two terms' residence and returned to Rayleigh Court--an old dilapidated manor-house which had been in possession of our family even since it began to fall into disrepair; which judging from the crooked walls and tottering chimneys must have been some time in the reign of the Plantagenets