It was certainly a very common amusement of my young undergraduate friends to make fun of the Heads of Houses. They did not seem to feel that shiver of unspeakable awe for them of which Bishop Thorold speaks; nay, they were anything but respectful in speaking of the Doctors of Divinity in their red gowns with black velvet sleeves. If it is difficult for old men always to understand young men, it is certainly even more difficult for young men to understand old men. There is a very old saying, “Young men think that old men are fools, but old men know that young men are.” Though very young myself, I came to know several of the old Heads of Houses, and though they certainly had their peculiarities, they did by no means all belong to the age of the Dodo. They were enjoying their _otium cum dignitate_, as befits gentlemen, scholars, and divines, and they certainly deserved greater respect from the undergraduates than they received. At the annual _Encaenia_, a great deal of licence was allowed to the young men; and I know of several strangers, especially foreigners, who have been scandalized at the riotous behaviour of the undergraduates in the Theatre, the Oxford _Aula_, when the Vice-Chancellor stood up to address the assembled audience. My first experience of this was with Dr. Plumptre, who, as I have said, was very tall and stately; when his first words were not quite distinct, the undergraduates shouted, “Speak up, old stick.” When the Warden of Wadham, the Rev. Dr. Symons, was showing some pretty young ladies to their seats in the Theatre, he was threatened by the young men, who yelled at the top of their voices, “I’ll tell Lydia, you wicked old man.” Now Lydia was his most excellent spouse. At first the remarks of the undergraduates at the _Encaenia_, or rather _Saturnalia_, were mostly good-natured and at least witty; but they at last became so rude that distinguished men, whom the University wished to honour by conferring on them honorary degrees, felt deeply offended. Sir Arthur Helps declared that he came to receive an honour, and received an insult. Well do I remember the Rev. Dr. Salmon, who was asked where he had left his lobster sauce; Dr. Wendell Holmes was shouted at, whether he had come across the Atlantic in his “One Hoss Shay”; the Right Hon. W. H. Smith, First Lord of the Admiralty, was presented with a Pinafore, and Lord Wolseley with a Black Watch. There was a certain amount of wit in these allusions, and the best way to take the academic row and riot was Tennyson’s, who told me on coming out that “he felt all the time as if standing on the shingle of the sea shore, the storm howling, and the spray covering him right and left.” After a time, however, these _Saturnalia_ had to be stopped, and they were stopped in a curious way, by giving ladies seats among the undergraduates. It speaks well for them that their regard for the ladies restrained them, and made them behave like gentlemen.