sub-warden to marry and retire into the country; and even the don who meant to be a don all his days put study or learned leisure first and instruction second, the world not yet believing in the ’spoon-feeding’ of youth. Very often, of course, they did nothing. After all, when you pay a man for exercising no particular functions, you can scarcely blame him for strictly fulfilling the conditions under which he was elected. ’But what do they do?’ inquired--quite recently--a tourist, pointing to the fellows’ buildings of a certain college. ’Do?!!’ replied the Oxford cicerone--’do? ... why them’s fellows!’ But if there was inactivity, it is only the more credit to the minority who really did interest themselves in the work of their pupils. Not that the relation of authorities to undergraduates was ever then what it has since become--whether the change be for the better or the worse. Few attempts were made to bridge the chasm which must always yawn between the life of teacher and taught. Perhaps now the attempt is a little over-emphasised; certainly things are done which would have made each particular hair to stand on end on the head of a Fellow of the old school. In his solemn and formal way he winked at rowing, considering it rather fast and on the whole an inevitable sign of declining morals. He wore his cap and gown with the anachronistic persistency of Mr. Toole in ’The Don,’ and sighed over the levity of a colleague who occasionally sported a blue coat with brass buttons. Had you told him that within the present century College Tutors would be seen in flannels, and that a Head of a House could actually row on the river in an eight--albeit the ship in question be manned by comparatively grave and reverend seniors, yclept the Ancient Mariners--he would probably have replied in the formula ascribed to Dr. Johnson: ’Let me tell you, sir, that in order to be what you consider humorous it is not necessary that you should be also indecent!’ But there is a lower depth still; and grave dignitaries of the University have been seen riding bicycles.