Now, in 1603 the population of England and Wales was computed at five millions; in 1690, at five and a half; by the last census it was found to be about twenty millions. It has, therefore, increased in the ratio of 1 to 4; while the members of the University of Oxford have not even doubled their numbers. If, too, we remember that the first figures were taken at a period of University decline, during troublous civil wars, and just after the death of Oxford's dearest monarch, we have even less reason to assert that the popularity of the University has extended.

These figures are worthy of the attention of the Oxonian. It will be interesting to him to know, that Christ Church and Exeter have always

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been, as they now are, the largest colleges in the University. Nor can this be accounted for by any reason except fashion and prestige. The college exhibitions are not half so attractive. Of more than 200 undergraduates not on the foundation at Christ Church, only about 40 receive any collegiate emolument, and the scholarships and exhibitions at Exeter are few and poor compared with several smaller colleges. Nor is the tuition at these institutions of a superior kind; far from it. The fact is, that, before the Reformation, Oxford was divided between two nations-north and south-of whose battles, which were sometimes bloody, we have still many a history. The north seems generally to have been the stronger.

University, Balliol, Queen's, Lincoln, Durham College, and Brasenose all recruited among the sturdy Danes of Yorkshire, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, and the adjacent counties. Exeter, Oriel, and Merton drew their forces from Saxons south of the Thames. These distinctions have been lost, with few exceptions. Queen's and Brasenose are still filled with north countrymen, and Exeter resounds with the dialects of Devonshire, Dorsetshire, and Cornwall, which are heard nowhere else in Oxford. This accounts in great measure for the numbers at Exeter, while Christ Church is the college par excellence.

It is amusing to notice the decadence of the halls, and sigh a scoutish sigh over the departure of those glorious vices on which they thrived extravagance and luxury. The halls of last century were by no means the rubbish-holes they were until lately, and now, with the exception of Magdalen Hall, they are rapidly being converted into trainingschools for plain-song, and the silly phantasms of the party who take in the Union newspaper. And these little establishments were once such comfortable inns for the wealthy sinners, who had been turned out from anywhere else; such choice dinners, such gentlemanly 'wines,' such a superb indifference to all discipline once distinguished them. Now, they say, the cook at Skimmery, a mute inglorious Vatel of Oxford, is meditating suicide; and the butler, who used to pocket £800 per annum, is actually dunning his old customers.

But poor little New Inn Hall, nicknamed 'The Tavern,' suffers most. Built on a site, called 'The Seven Deadly Sins,' she opened her Laislike arms to the most desperate refugees, and offered the hope of redemption and a degree to the most criminal of statute-breakers. It was her only means of subsistence, for she has never been popular. Nay, in Charles I.'s time, she was of so little account, that they turned her into a mint for melting into crowns and angels, the cups and spoons sent in from loyal colleges. Well, it is not so very long since the merry sound of champagne suppers echoed in her passages (for she has no quadrangle). VOL. XXVI.

There was only one room for the hall and the chapel, and at times, when the suppers were kept up very late, the one scout would come in at five or six in the morning, and say, Gentlemen, I am sorry to disturb you, but I must open the windows to let out the smoke for chapel will be at eight o'clock this morning.' It is needless to add that the principal and the scout usually formed the whole congregation.

But in spite of the scouts, it must not be supposed that Oxford has changed much for the better. It is only that frantic lavishness, and the bravado of fastness, have been succeeded by more careful and systematic vice.

To return to the constitution of the University. My first premiss is that it is essentially clerical; and this in the teeth of those phil-Oxonians who maintain that this alma mater educates all for all professions, for all positions above a certain line. In the absence of returns, it is difficult to prove, what every Oxonian may observe for himself, that at least threefourths of the students are destined for holy orders. Of the rest, about a half will become country gentlemen, a fourth go to the bar, and the remainder to various other pursuits.

However this may be, the governing body is undoubtedly clerical. To prove this I have given an hour to examining the lists of M.A.'s, whose names are on the books. I find that, exclusive of the College Fellows, there are about 2700, of whom not less than 2000 are already ordained. In other words, three-fourths of the elective body are clergymen. Of the 544 Fellows, at least 350 are in orders. The Vice-Chancellor is, of course, a clergyman, as, indeed, the Chancellor also was until 1552.

Conservative Oxford has, strange to say, altered none of her institutions so much as the government of the university. Her Conservatism is in fact the quality of the colleges, an innate attribute of the collegiate system, in which emolument plays so prominent a part. But the University herself, being poor, and having few sinecures to offer, has been allowed to alter some of her institutions when they were found to be growing troublesome.

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To understand the character of these changes, it must be borne in mind that the government of Oxford is by its nature elective. The elector is the M.A. Now, this degree would seem to be the oldest in the university, and for a long time the only one besides that of Doctor of some faculty or art. It was obtained originally, after a certain amount of residence, by disputations or public exercises, which may have been held before the Congregation of Doctors and Masters themselves. The moment a man had taken the magister's vows he was an important unit in the university known as the 'chancellor, masters, and scholars,' of Oxford, by which name it was afterwards incorporated. Before the Reformation, the Congregation of Masters, called together by the big bell of St Mary's, governed the university and elected all its officers; and as these officers were then very important, and as the war between the collegiate interests and those of the university at large was for ever being waged, these assemblies were naturally turbulent. To check this, a statute was passed by which Masters were divided into Regent and Non-regent. To become a Regent, and hold a vote-in short, to belong to the governing body-it was necessary to petition the Congregation itself.

This body, being thus sifted, met continuously for the conferring of degrees and other regular business, but the election of the principal officers still remained with the Congregatio Magna, or Convocation, convened from time to time for that purpose. The yearly election of proctors was now the great occasion for tumult; and in 1629, so much scandal was caused by it that an arrangement was made in 1634, by which these officers should be chosen in rotation from the different colleges. About this time, too, the originally popular character of the government was completely altered by the introduction of a small oligarchy, who quietly took to themselves the whole burden of the govern

ment.

This was the Hebdomadal Board, composed of the heads of houses, and their place of meeting was nicknamed Golgotha, from a general belief that Heads of Houses are nothing but

empty skulls. The name is obsolete at Oxford, though common in 1721, but is still retained at Cambridge. This Board proposed all the important measures, took the votes of the lower house on the subject, but remained quite uninfluenced by its opinion. When examinations for the commonest degree were substituted for mere exercises, the powers of Congregation were yet more restricted; and it was said with justice of that assembly in 1852, that it met 'only for the purpose of hearing measures proposed which it could not discuss, of conferring degrees to which candidates were already entitled, and of granting dispensations which were never refused.'

Thus, the constitution of Oxford changed from a noisy republic to a dull but respectable oligarchy. was reserved to the late Commission to erect it into something more like a constitutional government, with a puppet chancellor at the head, having much the same position as our excellent Sovereign holds with respect to this country. The Hebdomadal Board was abolished, and a council of the same name substituted. This is composed of the vice-chancellor as permanent president, the proctors, six heads of houses instead of twentyfour, six professors, and six members of convocation of the respectable standing of at least five years. Thus, the purely collegiate interest was shelved, the educational and professional duly represented, and new, younger life, infused into these solemn counsels by six members of convocation duly elected. The statutes, indeed, are still promulgated by the upper house, but the lower has the power to propose amendments, which are carried back to the Hebdomadal Council for adoption or rejection. But while the government is thus still reserved for the oligarchy, one most important advantage was gained by the masters in the permission to speak in English, for it will scarcely be credited that up to so recent a period all discussions were carried on in Latin, or at least a dialect which went by that name, though I have no doubt Cicero would have had hard work to understand it.

But the old system had one advan

tage which is much to be regretted. When gentlemen were forced to spout dog-Latin, they spoke less often and more briefly. Any one who now reads the university intelligence in the papers-and who but a university man does read them?-cannot fail to know that a little local parliament sits in that city of Dons, Duns, and Dunces. The consequences are fatal. Nothing is sweeter to the confirmed bachelor than to make speeches. It is your bachelor who toasts the bride at the breakfast, your bachelor who makes the longest speech at a public dinner, your bachelor who leads the stormy opposition, your bachelor who upsets the vestry meeting, and alarms the peaceful wardmote. Who so loquacious as Celebs? Who ever heard of a married man in a debating society? Nay; for the matter of that, it is possible that the orations of matrimony, lectures à la Caudle, and the perpetual loquacity of the weaker vessel, soon cure a man of his love for the gab. But if the confirmed bachelor is fond of talking-particularly nonsense-what must the Fellow of an Oxford College be? And what must be that parliament which is made up of celibate fellows? If you imagine an assembly of withered, narrow-minded schoolmasters, debating with ludicrous gravity and not a particle of fire on the most trivial questions, which one man with a talent for governing could dispose of in five minutes; if you imagine them fighting the debate again at dinner and in common room, and their whole minds occupied with these local trifles, which they magnify into mountains, while the great but distant world sinks from them into something less than a molehill; if you imagine that these interests allure the fellows and tutors from that attention which is due to the studies and discipline of their colleges, you compass that political folly of Oxford which is the principal cause of her uselessness as a school.

But there is no help for it. Englishmen, who have so little conversation in society, revel in making set orations in newspaper terminology, and it is, perhaps, as well that their bile should come away in nothing more dangerous than public invective.

From a board of directors to the imperial house everything must be done with the tongue, and if it be slower, it is certainly surer thus. But it were well if the parliament of Oxford were more judiciously composed; if each college sent one or two deputies-men who could afford to give up their collegiate duties to support their interests, and compelled the rest to confine themselves to the more sober and less exciting employments of teaching and correcting the refractory and the dullard.

There is little need to complain because the chancellorship of Oxford is an honorary sinecure. In this country we are fond of boasting that our great men, like Lord Castlereagh at Vienna, are better distinguished by the absence of cordons and crosses that wear out their dress-coats. We pride ourselves on the want of a Legion of Honour, on the exclusiveness of the Garter, the Bath, and the Thistle. But it is amusing to find that, while we are so chary of these pettier honours, we freely offer the highest offices in the land to the men that we delight to worship; freely, for their sakes, make sinecures of our greatest responsibilities. The universities are quite consistent in making the Chancellor's gold-lace and purple the covering of a mere puppet, which cannot even pronounce correctly the few words of learning it is called upon to utter. Scotland-already too content to imitate, where she fails to rival-has adopted the same plan for her universities, but then she certainly gets a good English sermon, like that of Lord Stanhope at Aberdeen, instead of a mere Latin formula and false quantities. As the Chancellor receives nothing more substantial than honour from the university, it is of little matter that he is a Prince Consort, a Wellington, or a Derby, non-resident, indifferent, and not really governing. It is only of importance that his locum tenens should be fit for the office.

Now, when the Chancellor was resident, and elected for one, two, or at most three years, it was sensible enough that he should appoint a head of a house to assist him as lieutenant. Such minor duties as would then devolve on the vice-chancellor

would not materially interfere with those he was called on to perform as master of a large beneficiary and collegiate establishment. But at the present day, when the vice-chancelfor does all the work, and is the real governor of Oxford; when, besides presiding over the Hebdomadal Council, the Convocation, and the Congregation, and filling the more really responsible position of chief civil magistrate in the university court, he has all the private business of the whole university to transact, to keep books, to pay moneys, to decide all matters of reference or dispute, to fight the corporation of the town and the several corporations of the colleges, and to make a large number of important appointments, it is scarcely reasonable to expect that he, one and the same man, should do his duty by his own college. If you answer that in very fact he does manage to combine the two offices, and not complain much, I reply, that however well he may fill that of vice-chancellor, he cannot the other, inasmuch as there is not one head of a house who has arrived as yet at a sense of what his real duties, his real responsibilities are, not one, certainly, who carries them out. But it is not right that the duties of the vice-chancellorship should be allowed to be an excuse for such negligence in any head of any college. Yet it is out of the question for him to combine the two offices, if he conscientiously fulfils both. How can he, for instance, pay a right and sufficient attention to the morals and discipline of sixty or seventy most undisciplined young men, to say nothing of twenty or thirty Fellows? Or, if he leave this to his lieutenant, himself being already a locum tenens, how is that lieutenant, who is always a tutor of the college, to combine these duties efficiently?

Nor is this the only, or even the chief objection to electing a vicechancellor from among the skulls of Golgotha. I have more than once pointed out the antagonism between the interests of the university, and those of the separate colleges, and shown how completely the former is in the power of the latter. As long as the vice-chancellor is a head, this will continue to be the case, for it is

improbable that he should at all oppose the collegiate interests, when he has a college to keep himself, and almost impossible that he should resist the encroachments, or counterbalance the weight of other colleges, when he does not seem to be raised above them. His position and double vote in the Hebdomadal Council tend to annul entirely the provisions made by the commission. As long as he remains a head of a house, the colleges must have a majority of two over the professorial interests on the one hand, and those of the regent but non-collegiate body on the other.

I have already, when writing about University Discipline, pointed out the insufficiency of the proctors. It will be answered, that there were never more than two of these officials, and that, during more than 600 years, no complaint has ever been made of the inadequacy of that number. It was, however, a very different thing to be proctor in the 13th and 14th centuries, to what it is now. Not only has the number of the students been trebled, but the duties of the proctors have increased considerably; the assemblies of convocation and congregation, the taking down names and receiving fees for examinations (a whole day's work), at least three times each term, and various other duties, have become so much more frequent, that the time of these officials is far more closely occupied than it has ever been before. One thing, however, is certain, whatever be the cause of it, that the proctors do not carry out sufficiently the discipline which the university chooses to think necessary. One of three changes is called for. Either abolish the proctors, and do without them, as is done in the metropolitan universities, and at Durham (and I have yet to learn that the students in those places are morally worse than at Oxford or Cambridge); or do away with their merely formal duties, such as their presence at the granting of degrees; or, since you shrink from any abolition with such pale horror, increase their numbers.

The chief objection to such an increase would be the expense. Now, there is one means of meeting this difficulty effectually. There are in Oxford six individuals who go by the