To thousands who have never been near the banks of the Cam or the Isis, “the ‘Varsity match” forms one of the episodes of each recurring year. It is a social festival; perhaps, also, it is the last great manifestation of cricket as a game, and not as a money-making business, which is to be found among first-class fixtures. But the University match is more than this, for it is the Mecca of all who have gone down from Oxford or Cambridge, the opportunity for the renewal of former acquaintances, possibly the only occasion when you come across those who were amongst your greatest friends in the day of _arcades ambo_. It is good to meet old comrades, good to hear the ring of the old jests, good to see how time is treating those who are your own contemporaries—ay, and good to give one kindly thought to those who have drifted to all the quarters of the Empire, and to remember those who have been removed from us by Death. The University match is, however, more than an excuse for reunion. It is the battle of the “Blues,” the struggle between eleven picked representatives of Oxford and the eleven contemporary delegates of Cambridge. All old University men, and all the undergraduates of to-day, with their families, relations, and friends, young and old, unite in shouting for their own side. It is as cheery a display of enthusiasm as one could care to show to that hypothetical individual, “the intelligent foreigner”—the foreigner one really encounters being “a chiel amang us takin’ notes” for hostile purposes. But little care we for international complications when Blue meets Blue. It is a grim, grand struggle for mastery, and some illustration of the evenness of the fight can be gathered from the fact that after sixty-eight contests Cambridge should only lead by four.