“The religion of Oxford appeared in those days to consist in honouring the King and his Ministers, and in perpetually popping in and out of chapel. Chapel was announced by the strokes of a big hammer, beaten on every staircase half an hour before by a scout. The education was suited to Divinity. A sort of supervision was said to be kept over the young, riotous community, and to a certain extent the Proctors of the University and the Deans of the different colleges did see that no very open scandal was committed. There were rules that had in a general way to be obeyed, and lectures that had to be attended, but as for care to give high aims, provide refining amusements, give a worthy tone to the character of responsible beings, there was none ever even thought of. The very meaning of the word ‘education’ did not appear to be understood. The college was a fit sequel to the school. The young men herded together; they lived in their rooms, and they lived out of them, in the neighbouring villages, where many had comfortable establishments.... All sorts of contrivances were resorted to to enable the dissipated to remain out all night, to shield a culprit, to deceive the dignitaries.” This was in 1809, and even later. And yet with all this, and while we are told that those who attended lectures were laughed at, it seems strange that the best divines, and lawyers, and politicians of the first half of our century, some of whom we may have known ourselves, must have been formed under that system. We can hardly believe that it was as bad as here described, and we must remember that much of the _Memoirs_ of this Scotch lady can have been written from memory only, and long after the time when she and her sister lived at University College. Life there, no doubt, may have been very dull, as there were no other young ladies at Oxford, and it cannot have been very amusing for these young girls to dine with sixteen Heads of Houses, all in wide silk cassocks, scarves and bands, one or two in powdered wigs, so that, as we are told, they often went home crying. All intercourse with the young men was strictly forbidden, though it seems to have been not altogether impossible to communicate, from the garden of the Master’s Lodge, with the young men bending out of the college windows, or climbing down to the gardens.