But while the country at large has been taking things so quietly, Oxford herself has been neither unmoved nor silent. Her bitterest enemies cannot have charged her, during the last few months, with inactivity. Schemes of reform and extension, which a few years ago would have startled the most zealous of the _progressistas_, have been poured into the Home Office, since this year began, at a rate which would seem to have disconcerted even the impassable Palmerston. There is not wanting both external and internal evidence of Lord John’s present bill having been ushered into the world somewhat in a hurry; in fact, there was some risk of his being outbid in the improvement market. Even our old friends of the Hebdomadal Board had made wonderful progress since we last wrote of them, and, as an undutiful boating undergraduate of our acquaintance phrased it to us, “put on an awful spurt at the end.” College Visitors have been called on to discharge unwonted duties; Heads and Fellows have been closeted in their respective common-rooms for days together; statutes that were before as the Eleusinian mysteries are recklessly published, with their owners’ new interpretations thereof, “by command of her Majesty,” and may be bought, together with the select epistles of Palmerston to his new _familiares_ in Oxford, for the small charge of one shilling and threepence; and Mr Parker’s well-known counter teems with pamphlets. Many a College dignitary appears to have had Job’s wish realised; his enemy has written a book, and he, as in duty bound, has been down upon him, in another, immediately. The brother Professors of Modern History and Hebrew, besides a stout pamphlet each, have had a little private (published) correspondence, in the latter part of which the professorial tone predominates over the brotherly. The Professor of Poetry has a letter—more poetical than anything else—to the Warden of Wadham, who has not replied; not having, possibly, a poetical taste. Of minor and anonymous _brochures_ there are more than we care to number. From this category we must carefully exempt the clever argument in defence of the private tenure of College property by Mr Neate of Oriel—himself a staunch university reformer, and a supporter of the Commission; and the unanswerable appeal of Mr Woodgate of St John’s to the “National Faith,” as pledged to founders by the acceptance of their endowments.