With this amusing insight into academic life, may be coupled another of earlier date. Williamson, Secretary of State, presented to Queen’s College, a silver trumpet and two pairs of banners. Thanks were returned by Dr. Thomas Barlow, in the name of the Society, and the gift was described as “most welcome, not only for its cost and curiosity, but for its congruity to them who by statute are to be called to dinner with a trumpet, though fitter for him to give than for a poor College to receive, to call them to a mess of pottage and twopenny commons. It will be used on all solemn days, but at other times their old brass trumpet will serve the turn.” In another letter, it is remarked, “The Provost, and all the company, highly extol them, and are very grateful for them. The trumpet was long sounded in the quadrangle, wine was drunk through the hall, and venison pasties were at every table, there being a whole buck from Lady Foster, of Aldermaston,” besides Williamson’s from Woodstock.[368] Old Christmas and Candlemas customs were revived, and the senior undergraduates amused themselves at night before the charcoal fires by bringing in the freshmen, and making them “sit down on a form in the middle of the hall, joining to the declaimer’s desk,”--where they were required to “speak some pretty apothegm, or make a jest or bull;” and if the thing were not done cleverly, the unhappy wight was punished by the seniors, who would “_tuck_ him--that is set the nail of their thumb to his chin, just under the lip, and by the help of their other fingers under the chin, they would give him a mark which sometimes would produce blood.”[369] A picturesque usage occurred on Holy Thursday, when the Fellows of New College walked to Bartholomew’s Hospital, which was decked with fruit for the occasion, and then, after reading the Scriptures, and the singing of hymns, they offered silver to be divided amongst poor men; then they proceeded to Stockwell, where, after reading the epistle and gospel for the day, the Fellows in “the open place, like the ancient Druids, echoed and warbled out from the shady arbours, melodious melody, consisting of several parts, then most in fashion.”[370] [Sidenote: UNIVERSITIES.]