There were practically only two Triposes at Cambridge--the Mathematical and the Classical--instead of the round dozen or so which now offer their honours to the student. No one could get a Fellowship except through those two Triposes. As for the Fellowships and Scholarships, indeed, half of them were close--that is to say, confined to students from certain towns, or certain counties, or certain schools; while at one College, King’s, both Fellowships and Scholarships were confined to ‘collegers’ of Eton, and the students proceeded straight to Fellowships without passing through the ordeal of the Senate House. Dinner was at four--a most ungodly hour, between lunch and the proper hour for dinner. For the men who read, it answered pretty well, because it gave them a long evening for work; for the men who did not read, it gave a long evening for play. There was a great deal of solid drinking among the men, both Fellows and undergraduates. The former sat in Combination Room after Hall and drank the good old College port; the latter sat in each other’s rooms and drank the fiery port which they bought in the town. In the evening there were frequent suppers, with milk-punch and songs. I wonder if they have the milk-punch still; the supper I think they cannot have, because they all dine at seven or half-past seven, after which it is impossible to take supper. In those days young noblemen went up more than they do at present, and they spread themselves over many colleges. Thus at Cambridge they were found at Trinity, John’s, and Magdalene. A certain Cabinet thirty years ago had half its members on the books of St. John’s. In these days all the noblemen who go to Cambridge flock like sheep to Trinity. There seems also to have been gathered at the University a larger proportion of county people than in these later years, when the Universities have not only been thrown open to men of all creeds, but when men of every class find in their rich endowments and prizes a legitimate and laudable way of rising in the world. ‘The recognised way of making a gentleman now,’ says Charles Kingsley in ‘Alton Locke,’ ‘is to send him to the University.’ I do not know how Charles Kingsley was made a gentleman, but it is certainly a very common method of advancing your son if he is clever. Formerly it meant ambition in the direction of the Church. Now it means many other things--the Bar--Journalism--Education--Science--Archæeology--a hundred ways in which a ‘gentleman’ may be made by first becoming a scholar. Nay, there are dozens of men in the City who have begun by taking their three years on the banks of the Cam or the Isis. For what purposes do the Universities exist but for the encouragement of learning? And if the country agree to call a scholar a gentleman--as it calls a solicitor a gentleman--by right of his profession, so much the better for the country. But Kingsley was born somewhere about the year 1820, which was