the hearty fellowship between University and stage. It has long been so. “At a stage play in Oxford,” says one old author, “(at the King’s Arms in Holywell) a Cornishman was brought in to wrestle with three Welshmen, one after another, and when he had worsted them all, he called out, as his part was, Have you any more Welshmen? Which words one of Jesus College took in such indignation that he leaped upon the stage and threw the player in earnest.” It must be admitted, however, that such familiarities on the stage itself are now unknown. To a stranger walking from the Union or the theatre, after Tom has sounded the ideal hour of studious retirement, Oxford might well appear to be a nest of singing birds. The windows of brilliantly lighted rooms, with curtains frequently undrawn, in dwelling-house or college, reveal rows of backs and rows of faces, with here one at a piano and there one standing beside, singing lustily, while the rest try with more or less success to concentrate their talents upon the chorus: probably they are singing something from _Gaudeamus, Scarlet and Blue_, or other song-books for students, soldiers, and sailors; or, it may be, a folk song that has never come into print. Sometimes, in the later evening, the singing is not so beautiful. For here those sing who never sang before, and those who used to sing now sing the more. Perhaps only the broadest-minded lover of grotesque contrasts will care for the ballads flung to the brightening moon among the battlements and towers. But the others should not [Illustration: JESUS COLLEGE The romantic tower and lowering gateway of the College are almost in the centre of the picture--a bit of Exeter College appearing above the buildings to the left. Two masters are engaged in vigorous argument in front of the Principal’s door, over which is a “hood” of the Georgian period, in quaint contrast with the surrounding style of architecture.] judge harshly or with haste. These are but part of the motley in which learning clothes itself. Much sound and fury is here no proof of deep-seated folly; nor quietness, of study; nor are a man’s age, dignity, and accomplishments in mathematical proportion to the demureness of his deportment. I notice on one little tankard these philosophies in brief, scrawled with a broken pen:-- Ah! who would lose thee, When we no more can use or even abuse thee? ΠΑΝΤΑ ΡΕΙ Qui vit sans folie n’est pas si sage qu’il croit. The old is better. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use. ΜΙΣΕΩ ΜΝΑΜΟΝΑ ΣΥΜΠΟΤΑΝ Assiduitate non desidia. Too much study is sloth. Desine fata deum flecti sperare precando. Quittez le long espoir et les vastes pensées. And though some are evidently framed with an eye confined to the tankard, how applicable all are to the shining pewter and life itself!