with some rubicund wigged Masters.  I like to think of the obscure and yet dignified lives that have been lived in these quaint and stately chambers.  I suppose that there used to be a great deal of tippling and low gossip in the old days of the vinous, idle Fellows, who hung on for life, forgetting their books, and just trying to dissipate boredom.  One tends to think that it was all like that; and yet, doubtless, there were quiet lives of study and meditation led here by wise and simple men who have long since mouldered into dust.  And all that dull rioting is happily over.  The whole place is full of activity and happiness.  There is, if anything, among the Dons, too much business, too many meetings, too much teaching, and the life of mere study is neglected.  But it pleases me to think that even now there are men who live quietly among their books, unambitious, perhaps unproductive, but forgetting the flight of time, and looking out into a pleasant garden, with its rustling trees, among the sound of mellow bells.  We are, most of us, too much in a fuss nowadays to live these gentle, innocent, and beautiful lives; and yet the University is a place where a poor man, if he be virtuous, may lead a life of dignity and simplicity, and refined happiness.  We make the mistake of thinking that all can be done by precept, when, as a matter of fact, example is no less potent a force.  To make such quiet lives possible was to a great extent what these stately and beautiful places were founded for—­that there should be in the busy world a corner where activities should not be so urgent, and where life should pass like an old dream, tinged with delicate colour and soft sound.  I declare I do not know that it is more virtuous to be a clerk in a bank, toiling day by day that others should be rich, than to live in thought and meditation, with a heart open to sweet influences and pure hopes.  And yet it seems to be held nowadays that virtue is bound up with practical life.  If a man is content to abjure wealth and to forego marriage, to live simply without luxuries, he may spend a very dignified, gentle life here, and at the same time he may be really useful.  It is a thing which is well worth doing to attempt the reconciliation between the old and the young.  Boys come up here under the impression that their pastors and teachers are all about fifty; they think of them as sensible, narrow-minded men, and, like Melchizedek, without beginning of days or end of life.  They suppose that they like marking mistakes in exercises with blue pencil, and take delight in showing their power by setting punishments.  It does not often occur to them that schoolmasters may be pathetically anxious to guide boys right, and to guard them from evil.  They think of them as devoid of passions and prejudices, with a little dreary space to traverse before they sink into the tomb.  Even in homes, how seldom does a perfectly simple human relation exist between a boy and his father!  There is