coveted distinctions should lead the heroine of the piece to the altar. [Illustration: _WAITING FOR THE COX. Drawn by Lancelot Speed._] Possibly the Oxford of a bygone generation may have furnished models for these brilliantly coloured pictures; or, as is more probable, they were created by the licence of fiction. At any rate the ’man’ of modern times is a far less picturesque person--unpicturesque even to the verge of becoming ordinary. He is seldom eccentric or _outré_ in externals. His manners are such as he has learnt at school, and his customs those of the world he lives in. His dress would excite no remark in Piccadilly. The gorgeous waistcoats of Leech’s pencil and Calverley’s ’_crurum non enarrabile tegmen_’ belong to ancient history. He is, on the whole, inexpensive in his habits, as it is now the fashion to be poor; he no longer orders in a tailor’s whole shop, and his clubs are generally managed with economy and prudence. If, however, the undergraduate occasionally displays the virtues of maturer age, there are certain indications that he is less of a grown-up person than he was in the brave days of old. It takes him a long time to forget his school-days. Only exceptionally untrammelled spirits regard independent reading as more important than the ministrations of their tutor. Pass-men have been known to speak of their work for the schools as ’lessons,’ and, in their first term, to call the head of the College the head-master. Naturally, too, school-life has imbued both Pass and Class men with an enduring passion for games--probably rather a good thing in itself, although inadequate as the be-all and end-all of youthful energy. Even those who do not play them can talk about them. Cricket and football are always as prolific a topic as the weather, and nearly as interesting, as many a perfunctory ’Fresher’s breakfast’ can testify. [Illustration: _RINGOAL IN NEW COLLEGE. Drawn by Lancelot Speed._] The undergraduate, in these as in other things, is like the young of his species, with whom, after all, he has a good deal in common. Take, in short, the ordinary provincial young man; add a dash of the schoolboy and just a touch of the _Bursch_, and you have what Mr. Hardy calls the ’Normal Undergraduate.’ [Illustration: Ringoal]