From the Hebdomadal Council we descend to Congregation—the Commissioners’ idea, clumsily expanded. The framers of the fourteen not very clear provisions of clause xvi., which provides for the composition of the said council, have found themselves in the position not unknown to those who, with a somewhat miscellaneous visiting list, have to give a very large party: anxious to issue as many invitations as possible, they have contrived to make exclusion very invidious, whilst no one considers his invitation a compliment. “We must draw the line somewhere, you know,” says Mr Dickens’ friend of the cheap and fashionable shaving-shop—“we don’t go below journeyman bakers.” And the coal-heaver turns away, an aggrieved and angry man. The bill is here quite as arbitrary, but hardly so distinct. Journeyman professors are included; journeyman tutors we believe not. Masters of private halls—which might contain two students—have a seat there; senior bursars, transacting the business of large colleges, have not. But of all unintelligible qualifications—“all who shall have a certificate of being habitually engaged in the study of some branch of learning or science” are to be members of this privileged body. (“Earnest” study, Lord Palmerston would have had it,[14] but the others would not bite.) And the authority which is to grant these “certificates of study” is, by clause xxxviii. 5, left to “any college” to “declare.” This, we think, must have been a mere successful joke of Palmerston’s inserting. Plainly the triumvirate were wise in not declaring it themselves. A certificate of study in some branch of learning or science!—how many hours a day? how are the results to be ascertained? is the candidate to be examined? If not, how is the “authority” to know? and what is to be the definition of learning and science? Would an accurate knowledge of “Bradshaw” reckon? It is a science which has never yet, we believe, been fully investigated. Would a man be allowed to “take up” the Times, including the foreign intelligence, with dates?—just at present, what with the Turkish names, and contradictory correspondence, it is much the hardest reading we know. Or the new and fashionable science of “common things,” hitherto much neglected in Oxford? It is idle to argue seriously upon such an enactment as this; it is legislation carried into its dotage. That such a crotchet could have been calmly entertained by any three sensible English statesmen, is one of those unaccountable instances in which fact is more improbable than fiction. If there is to be a remodelled Congregation, we suppose some such simple qualification as all M.A.’s _bonâ fide_ resident, or all engaged in collegiate tuition, discipline, or administration, would fully suffice, and be at least intelligible. On the question of allowing such a large and heterogeneous body, however composed, to debate in English, we think the Tutors’ objections entitled