At W---- College, therefore, I entered: and here arises the proper occasion for stating the true costs of an Oxford education. First comes the question of _lodging_. This item varies, as may be supposed; but my own case will place on record the two extremes of cost in one particular college, nowadays differing, I believe, from the general standard. The first rooms assigned me, being small and ill-lighted, as part of an old Gothic building, were charged at four guineas a year. These I soon exchanged for others a little better, and for them I paid six guineas. Finally, by privilege of seniority, I obtained a handsome set of well-proportioned rooms, in a modern section of the college, charged at ten guineas a year. This set was composed of three rooms; namely, an airy bedroom, a study, and a spacious room for receiving visitors. This range of accommodation is pretty general in Oxford, and, upon the whole, may be taken perhaps as representing the average amount of luxury in this respect, and at the average amount of cost. The furniture and the fittings up of these rooms cost me about twenty-five guineas; for the Oxford rule is, that if you take the rooms (which is at your own option), in that case, you _third_ the furniture and the embellishments--that is, you succeed to the total cost diminished by one third. You pay, therefore, two guineas out of each three to your _immediate_ predecessor. But, as he also may have succeeded to the furniture upon the same terms, whenever there happens to have been a rapid succession of occupants, the original cost to a remote predecessor is sometimes brought down, by this process of diminution, to a mere fraction of the true value; and yet no individual occupant can complain of any heavy loss. Whilst upon this subject, I may observe that, in the seventeenth century, in Milton's time, for example (about 1624), and for more than sixty years after that era, the practice of _chumship_ prevailed: every set of chambers was possessed by two cooccupants; they had generally the same bed-room, and a common study; and they were called _chums_. This practice, once all but universal, is now entirely extinct; and the extinction serves to mark the advance of the country, not so much in luxury as in refinement.