“ Men go down, and are as if they had never been: as is the race of leaves so is that of undergraduates; and so transiently are they linked with the enduring existence of their University, that, except in the case of the minority who have done great deeds on the river or the cricket-field, they either pass immediately out of recollection or else remain only as a dim and distant tradition of bygone ages. ”

“ All this would have been quite unintelligible to the youthful days of our friend, whom we see leisurely approaching the evening of his days in the midst of a generation that does not know him indeed, but which is certainly benefited by his presence and the picture of academic repose which he displays to his much-troubled and harassed successors: a peaceful, cloistered life; soon to leave nothing behind it but a brass in the College chapel, a few Common Room anecdotes, and a vague tradition, perhaps, of a ghost on the old familiar staircase. ”

“ But if Oxford goes to London, so does London come to Oxford. Whether it be fitting or not that the site of a theoretically learned University should be in summer a sort of people's park or recreation-ground for the jaded Londoner, the fact is so: the classes and the masses are always with us in one form or another. ”

“ There are always plenty of young men more or less connected with the Press who have wrongs to avenge; who are only too glad to have an opportunity of 'scoring off' the college authority which did its best--perhaps unsuccessfully, but still with a manifest intention--to embitter their academic existence; or of branding once for all as reactionary and obscurantist the hide-bound regulations of a University which did not accord them the highest honours. In these cases accuracy of facts and statistics is seldom a matter of much importance. ”

“ Certainly the University is a strange medley of contraries. It never seems to be quite clear whether we are going too fast or too slow. We are always reforming something, yet are continually reproached with irrational conservatism. Change and permanence are side by side--permanence that looks as if it could defy time:
'The form remains, the function never dies,' and yet all the while the change is rapid and complete. ”

“ Here they sit, a remarkable medley, all sorts, conditions, and even ages of men, herded together as they probably never will be again in after-life: undeserving talent cheek by jowl with meritorious dulness; callow youth fresh from the rod of the schoolmaster, and mature age with a family waiting anxiously outside; and a minority of the fairer sex, whose presence is rather embarrassing to examiners who do not see their way to dealing with possible hysteria. ”

“ Any one can pick holes in the University system of teaching and examination--'can strike a finger on the place, and say, "Thou ailest here and here,"'--or construct schemes of reform: more especially young men who have recently quitted their Alma Mater, and are therefore qualified to assert (as they do, and at times not without a certain plausibility) that she has failed to teach them anything. ”

“ There is the same kind of unalterableness about the few favoured individuals to whom the spirit of the age has allowed a secure and permanent residence in Oxford; a happy class which is now almost limited to Heads of Houses and College servants. You scarcely ever see a scout bearing the outward and visible signs of advancing years; age cannot wither them, nor (it should be added) can custom stale their infinite variety of mis-serving their masters. Perhaps it is they who are the repositories of tradition. ”

“ Candidates for honours were regarded as rather exceptional persons, and a brilliant performance in the Schools was regarded as a tolerably sure augury of success in life: a belief which was, perhaps, justified by facts then, but which--like most beliefs, dying hard--has unfortunately survived into a state of society where it is impossible to provide the assurance of a successful career for all and each of the eighty or hundred 'first-class' men whom the University annually presents to an unwelcoming world. ”

“ Now that every one is anxious to see his own name and his friend's name in print, and that the general public takes, or pretends to take, a keen interest in the details of every cricket-match and boat-race, a paper chronicling University matters cannot complain of the smallness of its clientèle. Every one wants news. The undergraduate who has made a speech at the Union, or a century for his college second eleven, wants a printed certificate of his glorious achievements. ”

“ But he knows pretty well that the University is really not rotten to the core, and that colleges are not always ruled by incapables, nor college opinion mainly formed by rakes and spendthrifts; and at the same time it gives the British Public a certain pleasure to imagine that it too has heard the chimes at midnight, although it now goes to bed at half-past ten--that it has been a devil of a fellow in its youth. This fancy is always piquant, and raises a man in his own estimation and that of his friends. ”

“ It has been said that the function of a University is to criticise; but the proposition is at least equally true that Oxford and Cambridge are continually conjugating the verb in the passive. We--and more especially we who live in Oxford, for the sister University apparently is either more virtuous or more skilful in concealing her peccadilloes from the public eye--enjoy the priceless advantage of possessing innumerable friends whose good nature is equalled by their frankness; and if we do not learn wisdom, that is not because the opportunity is not offered to us. ”

“ But in this she is only an instrument in the hands of modern civilisation, which is always extinguishing eccentricities and abnormal types; and even Oxford, while her sons are getting rid of those interesting individualities which used to distinguish them from each other, is fast losing many of the peculiarities which used to distinguish it from the rest of the world. It is an age of monotony. Even the Freshman, that delightful creation of a bygone age, is not by any means what he was. He is still young, but no longer innocent ”

“ There are still the old problems to be faced--the difficulty of adapting old rules to new conditions--the danger on the one hand of treating boys too much like men, and on the other of treating men too much like boys. Hence college authorities generally fall back on some system of more or less ingenious compromise--a course which is no doubt prudent in the long run, and shows a laudable desire for the attainment of the Aristotelian 'mean,' but which, like most compromises, manages to secure the disapproval alike of all shades of outside opinion. ”

“ It was only natural that the 'gentle natures and studious habits' of a select band of learners should undergo some modification as college after college was founded, and comparative frivolity would from time to time obtain admission to the sacred precincts. The University became the resort of wealth and rank, as well as of mere intellect, and the gradual influx of commoners--still more, of 'gentlemen commoners'--once for all determined the character of colleges as places of serious and uninterrupted study. ”

“ Nor were the outside public slow to avail themselves after their manner of the changed state of things. The possessor of a University degree has at all times been regarded by less fortunate persons with a kind of superstitious awe, as one who has lived in mysterious precincts and practised curious (if not always useful) arts, and at first the title of 'Honourman,' implying that the holder belonged to a privileged few--élite of the élites--whom a University, itself learned, had delighted to honour for their learning, could inspire nothing less than reverence. ”

“ In spite of these hardships it is gratifying to observe that, whether or not the University succeeds in its educational mission, it appears to leave nothing to be desired as a place of amusement for the jaded pleasure-seeker. People who go to sleep at a farce have been known to smile at the (to a resident) dullest and least impressive University function. Ladies appear to take an especial delight in penetrating the mysteries of College life. Perhaps the female mind is piqued by a subdued flavour of impropriety, dating from a period when colleges were not what they are ”

“ Define any college according to the general scheme indicated by its founder; when you have made the situation as intelligible as a limited knowledge of French or German will allow, the inquirer will conclude that 'also it is a monastic institution,' and that you are wearing a hair shirt under your tourist tweeds. Try to disabuse him of this impression by pointing out that colleges do not compel to celibacy, and are intended mainly for the instruction of youth, and your Continental will go away with the conviction that an English University is composed of a conglomeration of public schools. ”

“ It is no longer a clique of students who seek honours; public opinion in and outside the University demands of an increasing majority of men that they should appear to be improving their minds. The Pass-man pure and simple diminishes in numbers annually; no doubt in time he will be a kind of pariah. Colleges compete with each other in the Schools. Evening papers prove by statistics the immorality of an establishment where a scholar who obtains a second is allowed to remain in residence. ”

“ Outwardly the Universities do not change much, and it is easy to assume that the habits and ideas of their denizens do not change either. Thus it is that the young men of the 'National Observer,' coming back from a Saturday-to-Monday visit to a university which they never respected and are now entitled to despise, are moved to declare to the world the complete inutility of what they call the Futile Don. ”

“ If he wants to make a practice of picnicing on the Cherwell he founds a 'Cherwell Lunch Club,' with meetings, no doubt, and possibly an 'organ' to advocate his highly meritorious views. An excellent and a healthy life, no doubt! but yet one is tempted sometimes to fear that the loafer may become extinct; and then where are our poets to come from? For it is a great thing to be able to loaf well: it softens the manners and does not allow them to be fierce; and there is no place for it like the streams and gardens of an ancient University. ”

“ We cannot, all of us, taste the fierce joys of writing for the daily or weekly press, and the barrister's 'crowded hours of glorious life' in the law courts would be more overcrowded than ever were not a few fainéants suffered to moulder in the retirement of a university. Seriously, it was all very well for the young lions of the Press to denounce the torpor of Dons in the bad old days when colleges were close corporations--when Fellows inherited their bloated revenues without competition, and simply because they happened to be born in a particular corner of some rural district. ”

“ It may produce that straining after correctness in small matters which the cold world calls pedantry; and in the case of those who are not content only to observe, but are afflicted with a desire to produce, criticism of style takes the form of parody or imitation; for a good parody or a good imitation of an author's manner is an object-lesson in criticism. Hence it is that that same intolerance of error which makes members of a University slow in the production of really great works stimulates the genesis of ephemeral and mostly imitative literature. ”

“ Undergraduate talent is occasionally brilliant, but is naturally transient. Generations succeed each other with such rapidity that the most capable editorial staff is vanishing into thin air just at the moment when a journal has reached the highest pitch of popularity. Moreover, amateur talent is always hard to deal with, as organizers of private theatricals know to their cost; and there is no member of society more capable of disappointing his friends at a critical moment than the amateur contributor to the press. Should the spirit move him, he will send four columns when the editor wants one ”