[Footnote 78: Members are often able to introduce ladies, when there is likely to be room for them. And undergraduates may listen to proceedings from the Galleries, where, in defiance of rule, they are often heard as well as seen, should the business be exciting.] [Footnote 79: Such discussion as may seem needful has already taken place before a Meeting of the resident Members of the Senate, who have spent at least forty nights in Cambridge during the last Academic year, and whose names are accordingly on the "Electoral Roll." They are summoned, as required, by the Vice-Chancellor, to discuss the various matters which it is proposed to embody in "Graces."] These numbers are usually but small; indeed most of the business is altogether unopposed. But when some subject which excites general interest is brought forward, "backwoods-men" flock (and are whipped) up from all parts of England. Macaulay has given us a humorous poem on the coach-loads of country clergy thus pitch-forked into Cambridge to vote against the admission of Roman Catholics to the University; and within the last few decades, similar scenes were witnessed in connection with the question of their being allowed a recognised Public Hostel of their own, and with those of Compulsory Greek, and of granting Degrees to women. Such is the procedure at the Senate House; or, rather, such it has hitherto been, for the whole question of University legislation is even now in the melting-pot. The use of the building for the chief University examinations is also dying or dead, now that a vast "Examination Hall" has been built for that purpose. But Degrees still continue to be conferred there; the students found worthy by the examiners successively kneeling before the Vice-Chancellor, and being admitted by him to their degree in the name of the Trinity. They are presented by the "Fathers" of their respective Colleges, in a recognised order, beginning with the Royal Foundations, King's always coming first and Trinity second. When the Degree of Doctor ("Honoris causa") is conferred on any distinguished visitors, the place is thronged, and each in turn is introduced with a laudatory Latin speech by the "Public Orator," who has to exert his ingenuity in composing some neat and appropriate epigrammatic remark about him.[80] [Footnote 80: The office thus requires no mean scholarly and oratorical powers. When Queen Elizabeth visited Cambridge, the Public Orator had to make her a laudatory address of half an hour in duration, without notes, "with the Queen's horse curvetting under her" (for this was not in the Senate House--yet unbuilt--but in the open air before King's College Chapel), and with constant mock-modest interruptions from her Royal lips. Her only thanks were a commendation of his excellent memory.]