Now the perfervid reading man, and the man whose genealogical tree is conspicuous for a constant succession of maiden aunts, go to their cocoa and eggs: and, within three hours afterwards, the average man, to porridge, fish, eggs and bacon, coffee and oranges; the decadent, to cigars, liqueurs and wafers; the æsthete, to his seven wonders and a daffodil; and some, of all classes, to the consolations of philosophy and soda-water. Only the last-named habitually break their fast in solitude. For it is in Oxford the most social meal of the day. It may begin at any time from eight until half-past eleven--anything later being “brunch”--and last until half-past one. Some even believe that an invitation to breakfast embraces the afternoon. Lectures seldom interfere with the meal, since the man who leaves for their sake is not usually missed. A very early breakfast is pregnant with yawns, and may also be forgotten; a very late one is unhappily curtailed. Ten o’clock is an ideal to be striven after. The host has to be studious not to invite two men who are “blues,” or who are entered for the same examinations, or who are freshmen from the same school, which would be apt to produce treatises instead of conversation. It is dangerous also to have two epigrammatists. For that leads to a game of shuttlecock and battledore between the two, and of patience among the rest.... He knows that four men incapable of these things are coming, and as he peeps from his bedroom to see that all is ready, he hears their steps and laughter echoing up the stairs. He is rapidly surveying them all in his mind, wondering how such excellent ingredients will mix, when they enter, having picked one another up by good fortune on the way, and already got rid of a possible tendency to talk about politics, weather, or dreams. They discuss everything. One who is bound to be a fellow starts on “the æsthetic value of dons.” One who has never left England offers a suggestive remark on Swiss scenery or the effect of palms against a sunrise in the Pacific. The transitions are indescribably rapid; yet the link of merely an epigram or a laugh, or possibly the very sense of contrast and incongruity, makes the whole run on as some fine hedge of maple, hawthorn, holly, elm, beech, and wild cherry runs on, and is fine and nothing else, except to a botanist. The talk is a play in five acts: each man is in turn a chorus. But whether the subject be freshmen, or Disraeli, or Sancho Panza, or the English aristocracy, it is treated as it never was before. Perhaps that is the result of the detached attitude of a number of very young men. Perhaps it is because each in turn, of the five average men, is touched with genius temporarily by accretion from the other four. One says a dull thing, another a silly thing, a third a rash thing, a fourth a vague thing, and straightway the fifth catches fire and blazes with something of the true light from heaven, and he not less than the rest is astonished.