The Oxford of 1848 was still the Oxford of the Heads of Houses and of the Hebdomadal Board. That board consisted almost entirely of Heads of Houses, and a most important board it was, considering that the whole administration of the University was really in its hands. The colleges, on the other hand, were very jealous of their independence; and even the authority of the Proctors, who represented the University as such, was often contested within the gates of a college. It is wonderful that this old system of governing the University through the Heads of Houses should have gone on so long and so smoothly. Having been trusted by the Fellows of his own society with considerable power in the administration of his own college, it was supposed that the Head would prove equally useful in the administration of the University. A Head of a House became at once a member of the Council. And, on the whole, they managed to drive the coach and horses very well. But often when I had to take foreigners to hear the University Sermon, and they saw a most extraordinary set of old gentlemen walking into St. Mary’s in procession, with a most startling combination of colours, black and red, scarlet and pink, on their heavy gowns and sleeves, I found it difficult to explain who they were. “Are they your professors?” I was asked. “Oh, no,” I said, “the professors don’t wear red gowns, only Doctors of Divinity and of Civil Law, and as every Head of a House must have something to wear in public, he is invariably made a Doctor.” I remember one exception only, and at a much later time, namely, the Master of Balliol, who, like Canning at the Congress of Vienna, considered it among his most valued distinctions never to have worn the gown of a D.C.L. or D.D. It is well known that when Marshal Blücher was made a Doctor at Oxford he asked, in the innocence of his heart, that General Gneisenau, his right-hand man, might at least be made a chemist. He certainly had mixed a most effective powder for the French army under Napoléon. “But,” my friend would ask, “have you no _Senatus Academicus_, have you no faculties of professors such as there are in all other Christian universities?” “Yes and no,” I said. “We have professors, but they are not divided into faculties, and they certainly do not form the _Senatus Academicus_, or the highest authority in the University.”