’The dunce, the drone, the freshman or the fool, ’Tis theirs to counsel, teach, o’erawe, and rule! Their only meed--some execrating word To blight the hour when first their voice was heard.’ To a certain extent this is true in all ages. But there are worse things than mere sloth: this is not the measure of the crimes charged against college authorities. They--even such contemptible beings as they--are said to have the audacity to neglect untitled merit, and to truckle to the aristocracy. Every one knows Thackeray’s terrible indictment of University snobs: Crump, the pompous dignitary (who, to do him justice, seriously thinks himself greater than the Czar of All the Russias), and Hugby, the tutor grovelling before the lordling who has played him a practical joke. Every one remembers how even the late Laureate gibbeted his Dons--how ’One Discussed his tutor, rough to common men. But honeying at the whisper of a lord: And one the Master, as a rogue in grain, Veneer’d with sanctimonious theory.’ No doubt Universities are not immaculate. There have been Tartuffes and tuft-hunters there, as in the great world. No doubt, too, it was very wrong to allow noblemen to wear badges of their rank, and take their degrees without examination (although the crime was a lesser one in the days before class-lists were, when even the untitled commoner became a Bachelor by dark and disreputable methods); but these things are not done any more. At this day there are probably few places where a title is less regarded than at Oxford or Cambridge. It is true that rumour asserts the existence of certain circles where, _ceteris paribus_, the virtuous proprietor of wealth and a handle to his name is welcomed with more effusion than the equally respectable, but less fortunate, holder of an eleemosynary exhibition. But, after all, even external Society, which regards tuft-hunting with just displeasure, does--it is said--continue to maintain these invidious distinctions when it is sending out invitations to dinner. The fact is that there are a great many peccadilloes in London which become crimes at the University.