At the beginning of the same year the invasion of the public schools by the new plutocracy, as described by a correspondent in the _Morning Post_, who assumed the unfortunate pseudonym of "Pavidus," impelled _Punch_ to some outspoken comment. "Pavidus" complained that the standard in tips and pocket-money had been unduly raised by the young cotton-lords--boys who came back with £5 as a minimum. _Punch_ finds the root of the evil in the perversion of the public schools from their original intention--to educate the sons of poor gentlemen--and suggests that if the "nobs" don't like their sons associating with young plutocrats, they should get up poor schools of their own and keep the high-bred paupers select. A similar situation has arisen since the war, but the difficulty has been solved without snobbery or squealing. Parents who cannot afford to send their sons to schools with which their families have been associated for generations, send them elsewhere, but they do not "make a song about it." [Illustration: HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS ARTHUR (on pony): "Hollo! What have you got on your heads?" JUVENILE SWELL: "Why, you see, every snob wears a cap or a wide-awake now; so the men of our school have returned to the old Chimney Pot!" (As paterfamilias we are sorry to say that we have observed this monstrosity many times this Christmas.)] [Sidenote: _University Reform_] There remain the Universities, the apex of the educational pyramid. The Universities Commission was not appointed till 1872. Its report on the income and property of Oxford and Cambridge was not published till October 1874, and the Universities' Act was not passed till 1877. _Punch's_ contributions to the discussions which arose over University Reform nearly always take the form of hostile criticism of the champions of "no change," and he devotes by far the greater amount of space to the castigation of Oxford conservatives and non-resident reactionaries. The vote on the institution of the non-Collegiate or "unattached" system in 1868 furnished _Punch_ with the materials for a comprehensive indictment of all his pet Oxford aversions. In the wail of the Mediævalists, headed "An Oxford _Miserere_," _Punch_ ranges himself on the side of the reformers; Sir John, afterwards Lord Coleridge, who had taken an active part in the successful movement for the abolition of religious tests in the Universities; Conington, the distinguished Latinist and editor of Virgil; Raper, the well-known Fellow of Trinity College, who, under more than one President, was the power behind the throne; and Jowett, who with Stanley and Maurice, had always been supported by _Punch_ in his espousal of "modernist" views.