APPENDIX I

THE following is an extract from a very characteristic paper on Undergraduate Life at Oxford. It was written at Rugby, when Shairp evidently intended to write at much greater length on the subject of Oxford :

"There are few who do not look back on their first years at Oxford as among the happiest and most important of their lives. They were dear while present, but we knew not then how they were colouring all our after-existence. They are dearer to memory, and every year as we recede from them they grow in beauty and dimensions.

What makes those years so fair and ideal in remembrance? Why do they stand out so singly prominent from the long level of the past? What so endeared them to us? the peculiar time of life, or the sanctities of the place, or the friends who were then our daily companions? Whatever be the reason, no one who has himself been an undergraduate can look on another just entering college life without feeling for him a more than common interest. He has left behind the thoughtlessness of boyhood, but not yet lost its freshness. You feel that the soft light of morning is still upon him-that his horizon is not yet shut in; the large uncertainties, the boundless possibilities, are on his side. He knows not himself, and none know, what he may grow to-how life may shape itself for him.

But pass over three or four years, and he who was a freshman will be leaving college for the world. What was promise must be now ripening to performance, or withering to disappointment. What was fluid and unfixed must be setting into solid character, or have evaporated to leave him more hard and shallow-hearted than he came. This result the natural lapse of time would have produced, quite apart from the university. The question then may fitly be asked, What does Oxford do for under

graduates that three years elsewhere would not have done? with what peculiar influences are they there compassed? how do these influences act on different natures? what colour do they give to their mental training, views, feelings, habits, their entire character?

That Oxford does lay its hand on most men in some very real way-gently it may be but all the more strongly for its gentleness-all acknowledge, both those who themselves have undergone this discipline, and those who from without have watched its results on others. You will hear it said on all hands, in praise or in blame, There is no mistaking an Oxford man, meet him where you will. The impress is stamped deep, showing itself not mainly in scholarship, nor in logical power, nor in metaphysical, nor in historical—not in one nor in all of these, nor in anything which schools or lecture-rooms can teach-but in the constant transpiration of a common character, that breathes through all their thoughts, words, actions.

To understand the agencies that are at work, we must remember how widely the English Universities differ in most things from those of Scotland, Germany, indeed of all other nations— and further, how the peculiarities of the English system are concentrated at Oxford. Two points stand specially prominent, (1) the striking fact that Oxford education is accessible only to the wealthier part of the nation; (2) the predominance of Collegiate over University life. Whatever the cause may be, it cannot be denied that Oxford now educates the rich, not the poor. It is the inheritance not of the nation, but only of the upper section of the nation. Many rejoice in this, rejoice to see the flower of England's youth breathing an air of calmness and of beauty, undisturbed by the world's vulgarities. To others, not insensible to these things, the thought cannot but occur-Is that refinement worth preserving which can be secured only by a selfish exclusiveness? To them it seems that those Universities in other countries which throw wide their gates to all comers gain in justice and generosity what they lose in refinement. There it is no uncommon thing for poor students to travel more than a hundred miles on foot yearly from secluded homes to the University, to maintain themselves by labouring in their leisure hours at the humblest employments, and to return in summer and win their livelihood by teaching in distant schools, or labouring with their hands in the fields, or teaching the children of a few shepherd families in some district remote from the parish school. Facts could be told of privations still greater than those, undergone cheerfully for the sake of education-of youths who,

for years ill lodged and poorly fed, worked their way through Universities, which afterwards had reason to honour their names. In making this contrast, it is not forgotten that even in our day there have been remarkable cases of men living in Oxford on a third part of what a moderate undergraduate usually spends, but these, so few in comparison, hardly affect the general reckoning. Certainly they make nothing against the statement that Oxford is the University of the rich. They do not remove from her institutions the reproach (for such it is) that they turn a cold side to the poorer men, and bid them go elsewhere, for this is no place for them. A change in this long-cherished exclusiveness might, no doubt, be difficult and intricate, might sweep away many things hitherto most cherished by Oxonians. It certainly would make Oxford something very different from what any now living have seen it. So much is at once conceded; still it is worth considering whether the change would really destroy anything truly valuable-whether even the rich men themselves might not gain by it in moral culture; and, even if they gained nothing, the present exclusiveness can hardly defend itself on grounds of justice.

The second point of contrast between the two English and all other Universities is, that while the former maintain a strictly collegiate mode of life, in the others this is wholly unknown. This feature, so familiar to university men, may need explanation for strangers. In the existence of a University nothing more is essential than a body of men endowed by charter with the right of granting degrees to students in certain arts. and sciences. This is seen in Dublin University, where an undergraduate, after entering his name on the college books, may live in any part of the world, provided only, when his terms are over, he appear again to pass his examination and take his degree. German and Scotch Universities have generally superadded to this a body of Professors, attendance on whose lectures is made necessary for a degree. The Professors' lecture-room then becomes the centre of university life and interests. Each student must be present at one or more of these, for an hour a day, and when this is over he may reside where, and live how he pleases. Unless he break into open outrage the University does not intermeddle with him, nor hold itself responsible for his conduct. So that a man may pass through many years of such lectures, and not be known except by name to any professor he attends, nor even if he so pleased to a single fellow-student. But the two English Universities have generally professed a larger aim than this-to train not the intellect only, but in some sort

the whole man, as far as this can be done by any outward institution. And this has been attempted by dividing all the members of the University into separate Colleges, whither men resort, not merely to attend lectures once a day, but for three years together -to make them, as it were, their second home.1 Before a youth joins the University he must first have been entered at some College with which henceforth lie his most real daily relations; those with the University are more remote. When he comes into residence, the head of his College assigns him rooms within the walled and gated building, hands him over as a pupil to one of the tutors, and henceforth the college in general and his tutor in particular charge themselves with some care of his conduct. . . .

That the collegiate system makes in the main for good, that it is not well that youths just escaped from school should wander wholly at will, that college rules and life, if here and there a 'sweet restraint,' allow of a still more blessed range, they will be the first to grant who themselves have undergone that discipline. They will need no argument to justify collegiate life. None, but the remembrance of those with whom for three years within the same college walls they enjoyed an endearing intercourse, hardly possible but under the shelter of a collegiate home. Any one who looks back on his undergraduate years, and asks himself what it was that then most laid hold of his character, will find that besides the direct influences, such as college lectures, college discipline, reading for the Schools, and other things compulsory, he breathed an air of influences sidelong and indirect. The former do not fall to be treated here, but are reserved for a chapter by themselves. The latter, though more subtle and indefinite, and therefore more difficult to describe, are perhaps not less strong to mould men than the other more obvious ones. By indirect influences is meant whatever by its nature cannot be reduced to rule and system, whatever is left to each man's will to do or not to do, to feel or not to feel. Such is the feeling, so strong in Oxford, that flows in upon him at all hours from the old beauty of the place. Such too the tone, hardly less peculiar, of tastes and manners, which he gathers insensibly from the men about him, whether known or unknown, from the society of the many friendly ones, the intimacy of the favourite few, from the reading the place encourages, from the necessary work, from the

1 Many of these Colleges are several centuries old, and although they have undergone many changes, they are still the nearest representatives of the religious houses of the middle ages, part of whose revenues are still preserved in these foundations. There are some twenty such in Oxford.

power that lies in great names, Oxford's peculiar inheritance. These, acting silently and unceasingly, sink down to the very depths, and make the man-if anything from without can.

Of course the same set of influences do not tell on all. The disposition and circumstances of the individual must determine which are to be for him the telling ones. And such are the varieties of men as almost to foil any attempt to describe them, at once generally and discriminately. For, sort and divide men into classes as you will, the real character of each still escapes your classification, and clings to the individual. It is easy to divide the whole body of men, by the help of set phrases, into reading, and rowing, and riding men; but the same difficulty meets you here as in the attempt to divide the whole mind into separate faculties. When your analysis has done its best, the mind's real secret remains unspoken. It were pitiable to imagine that human beings really contain no more than these classifications concede to them, that even the commonest man's nature can be exhausted by current phrases like these. Though it seems a mere truism, yet it is well to bear full in mind that these divisions are insufficient; that given the set a man belongs to, and the outward appearance he wears, we have got but little, that there is something more behind all these things. If we remember this, outward facts and appearances will not be taken at more than they are worth, but used only as guide-posts to fix and steady the eye, in its survey of Oxford undergraduates and Oxford influences.

Let us go back in thought to the opening of the academical year, and think of the various characters that are gathered under one chapel roof, on that first Sunday morning after a long vacation. The College, say, is not a close one, confined by local restrictions; for its elements, freely gathered from many quarters, are happily intermingled. Each of the Public Schools has there its representatives, Etonians, Wickamysts, Harrowians, Salopians, Rugbeans-each coloured somewhat in manner and character according to the school from which they have come-all agreeing in that independent and self-reliant bearing, which is thought to be the peculiar product of public schools; agreeing too in a classical training, and general habit of mind, more or less shaped to meet university requirements. Others there are trained at private schools, with less manner it may be and less scholarship, but more information perhaps than most public schools furnish. And then there are a few from no school at all, but educated in their own home-or abroad-or anyhow. Their scholarship is often miserable, their attainments all neglected; much lost, some