We have changed all that, like other provincial centres; and undergraduates who want to ’see their dentist’--a venerable and time-honoured plea which we have heard expressed by the delicate-minded as ’the necessity for keeping a dental engagement’--may now run up to town and back between lunch and ’hall;’ the latter function having also marched with the times, and even six-o’clock dinner being now almost a thing of the past. Not so long ago five was the regular hour. In the early seventies seven-o’clock dinner was regarded as a doubtful innovation; and there we have stopped for the present. But the fashionable world outside the colleges imitates London customs--always keeping a little way behind the age--and what has been called the ’Parks System’ actually dines as late as 7.45 when it is determined to be _très chic_. It is only one sign of the influx of metropolitan ideas; but there are many others. Oxford tradesmen have learnt by bitter experience that the modern undergraduate is not an exclusive preserve for them like his father. That respected county magnate, when he was at Oriel, bought his coats from an Oxford tailor and his wine from an Oxford wine-merchant, to whom--being an honest man--he paid about half as much again as he would have paid anywhere in London, thereby recouping the men of coats or of wines for the many bad debts made by dealing with the transitory and impecunious undergraduate. But his son gets his clothes in London, and his wine from the college, which deals directly with Bordeaux. And the tone and subject of conversation is changed too. Oxford is thoroughly up to date, and knows all about the latest play at the Criterion and the latest scandal in the inner circle of London society--or thinks it does, at any rate: there is no one who knows so much about London as the man who does not live there. [Illustration: _COMMEMORATION: OUTSIDE THE SHELDONIAN THEATRE. Drawn by T. H. Crawford._]