Modern collegiate discipline is a parlous matter. There are still the old problems to be faced--the difficulty of adapting old rules to new conditions--the danger on the one hand of treating boys too much like men, and on the other of treating men too much like boys. Hence college authorities generally fall back on some system of more or less ingenious compromise--a course which is no doubt prudent in the long run, and shows a laudable desire for the attainment of the Aristotelian ’mean,’ but which, like most compromises, manages to secure the disapproval alike of all shades of outside opinion. We live with the fear of the evening papers before our eyes, and an erring undergraduate who has been sent down may quite possibly be avenged by a newspaper column reflecting on college discipline in general, and the dons who sent him down in particular. Every day martinets tell us that the University is going to the dogs from excess of leniency; while critics of the ’Boys-will-be-boys’ school point out the extreme danger of sitting permanently on the safety valve, and dancing on the edge of an active volcano. In recent years most of the ’Halls’ have been practically extinguished, and thereby certain eccentricities of administration removed from our midst. It was perhaps as well; some of these ancient and honourable establishments having during the present century rather fallen from their former reputation, from their readiness to receive into the fold incapables or minor criminals to whom the moral or intellectual atmosphere of a college was uncongenial. This was a very convenient system for colleges, who could thus get rid of an idle or stupid man without the responsibility of blighting his University career and his prospects in general; but the Halls, which were thus turned into a kind of sink, became rather curious and undesirable abiding-places in consequence. They were inhabited by grave and reverend seniors who couldn’t, and by distinguished athletes who wouldn’t, pass Smalls, much less Mods. At one time ’Charsley’s’ was said to be able to play the ’Varsity Eleven. These mixed multitudes appear to have been governed on very various and remarkable principles. At one establishment it was considered a breach of courtesy if you did not, when going to London, give the authorities some idea of the _probable_ length of your absence. ’The way to govern a college,’ the venerated head of this institution is reported to have said, ’is this--_to keep one eye shut_,’ presumably the optic on the side of the offender. Yet it is curious that while most of the Halls appear to have been ruled rather by the _gant de velours_ than the _main de fer_, one of them is currently reported to have been the scene of an attempt to inflict corporal punishment. This heroic endeavour to restore the customs of the ancients was not crowned with immediate success, and he who should have been beaten with stripes fled for justice to the Vice-Chancellor’s Court.