thoroughfare branching off into mere lanes, neither these nor that apparently ever cleaned.  The huge buildings of scaling, mouldering stone are venerable-looking piles which contrast sadly with the gabled cottages of crepi, hurlin, or wattle and dab; and the brand-new store with its plate-glass windows hustles the old-fashioned lollipop-shop.  As regards minor matters there are new market passages but no Public Baths; and on Sundays, the stands are destitute of cabs, although with that queer concession to democracy which essentially belongs to the meaner spirited sort of Conservatism, “’busses” are allowed to ply after 2 p.m., when the thunder of bells somewhat abates.

Old “Alma Mater,” who to me has ever been a “durissima noverca,” dubs herself “University;” and not a few of her hopefuls entre faiblesse et folie, still entitle themselves “University men.”  The title once belonged to Oxford but now appertains to it no more.  Compare with it the model universities of Berlin, Paris and Vienna, where the lists of lecturers bear the weightiest names in the land.  Oxford is but a congeries of twenty-one colleges and five halls or hostels, each educating its pupils (more or less) with an especial eye to tutors’ fees and other benefices, the vested rights of the “Dons.”  Thus all do their best to prevent the scholars availing themselves of University, as opposed to Collegiate, lectures; and thus they can stultify a list of some sixty-six professors.  This boarding-school system is simply a dishonest obstacle to students learning anything which may be of use to them in after-life, such as modern and Oriental languages, chemistry, anthropology and the other -ologies.  Here in fact men rarely progress beyond the Trivium and the Quadrivium of the Dark Ages, and tuition is a fine study of the Res scibilis as understood by the Admirable Crichton and other worthies, circa A.D. 1500.  The students of Queen Elizabeth’s day would here—­and here only—­find themselves in congenial company.  Worse still, Oxford is no longer a “Seat of learning” or a “House of the Muses,” nor can learned men be produced under the present system.  The place has become a collection of finishing schools, in fact little better than a huge board for the examination of big boys and girls.

Oxford and her education are thoroughly disappointing; but the sorest point therein is that this sham University satisfies the hapless Public, which knows nothing about its faineance.  It is a mere stumbling-block in the way of Progress especially barring the road to one of the main wants of English Education, a great London University which should not be ashamed to stand by Berlin, Paris and Vienna.

Had the good knight and “Pious Founder,” Sir Thomas Bodley, who established his library upon the ruins of the University Bibliotheca wrecked by the “Reformation,” been able to foresee the condition of Oxford and her libraries—­Bodleian and Radcliffean—­in this latter section of the XIXth century, he would hardly, I should hope, have condemned English students and Continental scholars to compulsory residence and labour in places so akin to the purgatorial.