For the most part, the heavier vices and lighter virtues of speech are said to flourish there. “It is a pity,” said a critic of the Union, “that so many ingenious youths should disarm themselves by pretending to be in the House of Commons, which they rival as a club.” A Frenchman has said that its histrionic wealth at one time equalled the house of Molière. Indeed, as a home of comedy it is the most amusing and accomplished in Oxford; and on that account, probably, the public theatre seldom provides anything but opera and farce. A bland, clever youth, stooping like a candle in hot July--his body and a scroll of foolscap quivering with emotion, as he suggests to a smiling house that the Conservative party should bury its differences under the sole management of Mr. Redmond: a stiff, small, heroic figure--with a mouth that might sway armies, a voice as sweet as Helicon, as irresistible and continuous as Niagara--pouring forth praise of the English aristocracy and the Independent Labour Party, to a house that believes or disbelieves, and applauds: a minute, tormented skeleton, acrobatic and ungainly, so eloquent on the futility of Parliament, that he might govern the Empire, if he could govern himself: one who is not really comfortable without a cigarette, yet awes the house by his superb complacency, as he utters now and then a languid epigram about the Irish peasantry or indigo, in the brief intervals of an apparent colloquy with himself:--these and a multitude of the fervid, the weighty, the listless, the perky, and the dull, are among the Union orators of yesterday. “I went to the Union to be amused,” says one. “They were debating a question of literature. A brilliant man opened; a learned opposed. Others followed--some for, some against, the motion; others again made observations. I was not disappointed. I was edified. There was no research. There was little originality. But there was a dazzling simplicity and lucidity, and an extraordinary power of treating controversially the profoundest matters as if they were common knowledge; above all, the reserved gestures, the self-control, were dignified, and made me believe that I was listening to the opinions of an assembly of middle-aged men of the world, and not a handful of students not yet past their majority.” But the glories of Union oratory are weekly: the theatre is consequently a favourite evening lounge; some even prefer it on Thursdays. It is noticeable that the house is more familiar than elsewhere in its praise or disapproval of the players. Half a dozen in the dress circle will hold a (rather one-sided) conversation with the stage for half an evening. It is also customary, and especially on Saturdays, for the audience to sing the choruses of songs to their taste many times over, and then to revive them in the quiet streets. Banquets, and the reception given to the speeches of actors and managers, and the nature of those speeches as well, prove