describing the theory correctly, added, with somewhat unnecessary precaution, that the cup must not exceed thirty-two feet in height; he of course looked at the tart from a strictly examination point of view.

Undergraduates, like school-boys, consider their teachers to be beings animated by a mysterious malevolence. They may be good-natured by occasional impulses, but their main object is to enforce a compliance with certain mysterious rites, which are recommended by nothing but their own arbitrary will and pleasure. A man does not understand why he should get up Scripture history any more than why he should stand upon his head and repeat abracadabra seventy times running. One test is to him as devoid of reason as the other. Accordingly he puts off his learning as long as possible, and then goes to some famous adept in the great art of cramming. The essential peculiarity of this art is to save intellectual exertion to the learners. The propositions to be learnt are eviscerated of all meaning, and then, like preserved meats, packed into the smallest possible formula to be repeated by rote. I vaguely

recollect a Scripture history put into rhyme, of which

the only verses that stick by me are these:

Joshua, son of Nun, and Caleb, son of Jephunneh,

Were the only two

Who ever got through

To the land of milk and honey.

It is a cardinal principle of judicious cramming to try the memory rather than the intelligence. I have known several youths who carried this so far as to start upon the apparently desperate undertaking of learning Euclid by heart rather than understand its propositions. If you endeavour to explain a diffi culty, the invariable answer is, "Don't bother me with explanations; I will get it up, but I am not going to understand it." The smallest change of conditions, such as altering letters in a mathematical formula, is generally enough to upset this intelligent class.

I should not be just if I did not add that efforts are being made to improve this state of things. I hope they may be successful. Meanwhile, it will perhaps be evident why I said a few pages back that some people thought the intellectual training of

the captain of a boat-club better than that which he receives from the poll. It requires much exertion of common sense and judgment, whereas the poll only requires a trifling effort of memory. Moreover, the things thus learnt naturally run off a man's mind, like water off a duck's back, and on looking at them impartially, I am much inclined to think it the best thing they can do.

VI.

THE UNION.

In describing the intellectual and the muscular class of undergraduate, I have chiefly confined myself to those who seek glory on the river and in the mathematical tripos. These are, in fact, the most characteristic products of our soil. Plants of different origin are springing up around them with more or less vitality. New studies and new sports are being gradually introduced to diversify the former monotony of our pursuits; but they have not checked the vigorous growth of the older forms, nor prevented them from still affording the purest type of the genuine Cambridge man.

It is not, however, to be supposed that all our

energy is exhausted in producing mathematicians and rowing men, nor even in producing all the varieties of the two classes at the head of which these enthusiasts are respectively presumed to stand. There is always some vagrant unfixed ability which cannot show off its paces within the arena chalked out by official examiners; there are, therefore, a good many men who consider the recognition which they do receive to be altogether inadequate to their merits. We all know the very unpleasant individual who passes his life without ever getting his talents duly appreciated. He has a tendency to invent new theories of the universe, to write life dramas, or to make what the reporters call "lucid expositions" of new theories of political economy to philosophical societies. The Ministry have evidently not got their eye upon him; he makes no way towards the goal of a judgeship or a bishopric; and accordingly he revenges himself upon mankind, not by taking a "pike,” according to Mr. Weller's innocuous plan, but by becoming a stupendous bore. That interesting body, the Social Science Association, provides the intellectual exchange most frequented by the dealers in