At my first visit there was still an old-world atmosphere about the place, something which had preserved a sort of elusive aroma of the cloister and the monk. It was the Oxford of the great men who from days immemorial had made it famous; in modern times of “that devout spirit,” Pusey, Newman, and “the movement.” It was instinct with the music of Keble. But to me at that particular moment it was the Oxford of Gaisford. The great Dean died a few weeks later, Liddell became Dean, and Oxford came under the gentle sceptre of a bevy of ladies, two of them very beautiful, very smart, and not a bit monachal. Moreover, it soon ceased to be a place of learning for English gentlemen of the reformed Christian faith. In 1855 the Parthian, the Mede, the Elamite, the dweller in Mesopotamia, had no place in the sacred cloisters. We were all called upon to subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles (“forty, if you wish it, sir,” was the pert answer of a famous wit), and as for the various fellowships and scholarships, they remained as they had been instituted by the pious founders. All Souls was a link between the university and the great world. The qualifications for a fellowship there were that the candidate should be “bene natus, bene vestitus et modice doctus _in arte canendi_.” It was irreverently said that those last three words had long since been omitted. The legend ran that before the election the candidates, duly qualified as founder’s kin, were invited to dine in Hall: a cherry tart was served, and the supreme test upon which election depended was the way in which the aspirant disposed of the stones.