I think I have said enough to prove that an office which combines so much ease with so much dignity is an ornament to the University, and to call down indignation upon some rash reformers who once ventured to propose the "exploitation," or, as they coarsely expressed it, the utilization of masterships a term only fit to apply to sewage. Radicals of this destructive character would soon proclaim themselves unable to see the merits of a constitutional monarch. They would insist upon his governing as well as reigning.

To conclude the subject of our great authorities, I must add a few words upon professors. An immense deal of talk has been expended upon our professoriate, which in other places constitutes the whole teaching body of the University, but which at Cambridge has been pushed out of place and reduced to a small compass by the tutorial system. I am not going to argue or even to hint at any arguments about University reform. I will only remark that the insignificance of the part played by professors follows from a very simple principle, which I have endeavoured to explain elsewhere.

Our plan is not to teach any one anything, but to offer heavy prizes for competition in certain welldefined intellectual contests. As most of the professors lecture upon topics which have no particular bearing upon those contests, upon Sanskrit perhaps, or Archæology, or History, or Political Economy, or some equally useless and absurd subject, few people go to hear them. They would not be a bit more likely to win the prizes we offer if they did; and we have, as I have remarked, a healthy contempt for any knowledge which does not directly pay.

We are, therefore, obliged to legislate to provide the professors with hearers ; as we don't

wish to interfere with the studies of our best men, we fill their rooms with the worst. Young gentlemen, for example, who are studying theology, which generally means young gentlemen who are not studying at all, have to attend some twenty lectures. I earned eternal gratitude from the Divinity Professor, whom I honoured with my attendance, by a simple device. I wished to learn shorthand; and, consequently, whilst some ninety-nine of his class were engaged in sleeping,

or making surreptitious bets, or sketching flattering portraits of the lecturer, I was always to be seen taking voluminous notes with desperate eagerness. I confess that I have never referred to them since; but that professor, though now a dean, always stops to speak to me, and I can see that my delicate flattery still touches his memory.

Other professors are provided with a still inferior material. Poll men are compelled to attend a course of lectures, and to pass an examination in them afterwards. To pluck a man once for ignorance in these examinations is considered cruel; but to pluck him twice is an almost unheard-of severity. It follows that the standard of attention is not very high. An energetic professor of course enforces order upon his roomful of ignorant and idle youths, who come to him precisely because they are ignorant and idle. Even this is not always the case. A professor who took the names of the attending class at the end of his lecture found that a large proportion came in fifty-five minutes after the beginning. He then took the names at the beginning, and found that before the end, half had

oozed out through the door. He locked the door, and a new route of escape was discovered through the window. The window was secured, and the consequence was probably a greater increase of attendance than of attention. Some gentlemen, however, possess the art of attracting hearers without compulsion, and as a rule, our young men submit to the infliction, sufficiently senseless, with remarkable good grace.

I will only add that our professors are ill paid, because the University, as distinguished from the colleges, is very poor; that they are a body of men of whom on other grounds we have a right to be proud; and that they give, in addition to these courses, other excellent lectures, of which the only complaint to be made is that they are too often delivered to very bare benches. I hope that things will soon be placed on a more satisfactory footing.

XII.

CONCLUSION.

I MIGHT add many other sketches to my limited gallery. I have not attempted to exhaust my materials, but to select a few of our most characteristic types. Many species must, so far as I am concerned, go without a natural historian. With some I am but slightly acquainted, and some are so poor in individuals that I could not describe them without personality.

Thus I am conscious of one obvious deficiency. Oxford and Cambridge are, in the eyes of Dissenters, hotbeds of unhealthy forms of belief; they shoot out feelers towards Rome, and are not unaffected by the blight of Germanism, neologism, and various