These disagreeably prominent features of the report of 1852 will not be found in the bill of 1854. Other minor points there are, in which the views of the Commissioners have been set aside, in deference, as we may hope, to the deliberately-expressed opinions of the University. The abolition of the distinctive ranks of nobleman and gentleman-commoner, odious in the eyes of the popular reformer, but proved to be at least harmless, and probably beneficial in practice, has not been insisted on; a light straw, perhaps, yet serving as some indication of the setting of the reform current just at present. The general matriculation examination, from which such benefit was hoped to the general standard of scholarship at entrance—often it must be confessed very low—a point in which we are not sure but that the Commissioners were in the right by accident, this too we hear no more of, it would seem in deference to the opinion of the University.[5] And even in the great question of the throwing open the foundations, the clauses of the proposed act, though, as we shall be prepared to show presently, utterly indefensible, whether on the ground of justice or expediency, are yet not so sweepingly destructive as Recommendation 40 of the Commissioners’ Report. There is another point too, the great difficulty and the great evil, as we think, not of the Oxford system, for the system itself does not recognise it, but of Oxford practice, which, as the bill would surely have been powerless to deal with effectually, its promoters have perhaps done wisely in not dealing with at all. Of private tuition, with the expenses which it involves, the idleness which it encourages, the specious pretexts under which it has gradually wormed its way into a sort of quasi-official existence, and is fast sapping all university and collegiate education as such, and substituting the flimsy trickery of “cram” for the sound and wholesome scholarship of other days,—we have expressed our opinion elsewhere in no measured terms.[6] And we are thankful to my Lord John, or Palmerston, or our own clever and, as he assures us, affectionate representative,—whichever we are to thank for such benefits, for none of these gentlemen seem over anxious to take the credit of their good deeds,—that they have left this question, at all events, for the University to deal with it at its own discretion. The private Tutors, we rejoice to say, are not recognised as yet, even in name, by act of Parliament. If we have no “enabling powers” to get rid of them, they are at least not forced upon us by “extraneous authority.” The Commissioners themselves found them a ticklish subject to handle; they took them up unwillingly, apologised for them in a deprecating manner, as being ugly but useful, and were glad to let them go. It was not the only point upon which, for excellent reasons, they were compelled to differ from their own witnesses. Clause xxxvi. 1, is, we