In the present state of society, it is, perhaps, less necessary than it would have been formerly, that I should give you any caution or advice on the subject of _temperance_. Five-and-thirty years ago, it was customary to drink a good deal of wine after dinner, and young men at Oxford were not behind-hand with the rest of the world in complying with this bad custom. It was _then_ generally the system, to initiate a freshman by making him completely drunk. Scripture is by no means sufficiently listened to _now_, but perhaps its warnings were less known and less regarded _then_. The master of the revels and his abettors were ignorant, or unmindful, of the threatenings denounced by the voice of Inspiration,--_Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also_: and again--_Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink_. Regardless of these denunciations, and trusting to the strength of their own heads, and the practised discipline of their own stomachs, their _noble_ ambition was to make drunk as many of their guests as possible, especially any luckless freshman who chanced to be of the party. Those who, whether from religious principle or from manliness of character, did not choose to submit to be made drunk, were obliged either to encounter these _kind_ endeavours with sturdy resistance,--resistance which sometimes occasioned a total cessation of intercourse and acquaintance,--or to evade them by stratagem. Glass after glass was dexterously emptied upon the carpet under the table, or the purple stream sought concealment under heaps of walnut-shells and orange-peel. In short, at a tolerably large wine-party there was wasted, or _worse than wasted_, a quantity of Port wine sufficient to check the ravages of a typhus fever in an entire village. These days of _Celtic barbarism_ are, I hope, utterly passed away. As in general society very little wine is consumed, (_excepting at dinner_,) so Oxford has caught the spirit of the times, and the bacchanalian revels to which I have alluded are, I believe, much less common than they were formerly, if not entirely exploded. I am afraid, however, that even now more wine is drunk in some colleges, than is consistent either with Christian temperance, or with habits of study, or with the preservation of health.