Theoretically the Three Terms into which the Academic Year is divided consist of about ten weeks apiece; but, in practice, they have only eight of "Full Term," during which residence is compulsory. The first of these is the "Michaelmas," or, as it is popularly called the "October" term, lasting from about mid-October to mid-December. After the Christmas vacation follows the "Lent" term, from the middle of January to the middle of March. Then comes a month of Easter vacation, and then the "Easter" (more generally known as the "May") term; at the end of which the close of the working year is celebrated by a series of social festivities in connection with the College boat races, collectively designated "the May Week," though invariably taking place in June. Finally comes the "Long Vacation" (the last word being omitted in popular parlance), lasting till a new year begins in October. Many of the more studious men are, however, permitted to reside during July and August for the purposes of private reading. A man in residence, we may mention, is said to be "up"; thus we meet with such phrases as "coming up," "going down," and being "sent down," when ordered to leave Cambridge, temporarily or permanently, for disciplinary reasons. All this is very unlike Continental or American University life, but is almost the ditto of Oxford. For Cambridge is the sister-daughter of Oxford. It was by Oxonian colonists that the University of Cambridge was begun; the earliest Cambridge College, Peterhouse, was not only suggested by the earliest Oxford Foundation, Merton, but borrowed its very Statutes; and the development of the two seats of learning has twinned itself throughout the centuries to an extent unparalleled elsewhere in history. The result is that to-day there are no two places in the world so alike, socially, intellectually, and even physically, as Oxford and Cambridge. The latter has at present the larger number of students; but each has approximately the same number of Colleges, and of satellite Collegiate institutions, formally or informally connected with the University (_e.g._, the Ladies' Colleges); and in each the Academic organisation, the social code, and the life led by both students and teachers, is almost absolutely identical. To experts well acquainted with both places the minute shades of difference are of extreme interest; but to the average visitor the places are as like as twin sisters. The very names of the Colleges are the same in no less than a third of the cases. If there is a Trinity at Cambridge there is also a Trinity at Oxford, if there is a Magdalen at Oxford there is a Magdalene at Cambridge; while St. John's, Jesus, Corpus Christi, and Pembroke are all in like manner duplicated. And, both at Oxford and Cambridge, Colleges are named from Queens; though a subtle difference in spelling (Queen's and Queens') records the fact that, while one Queen founded the Oxford College, two were concerned in the Cambridge foundation.