until he has the good luck to fall back upon his friends. There he is safe again. His name will indeed be handed down through half a dozen undergraduate generations for his least characteristic adventures, but if that is a rare distinction, and equivalent to a press immortality, it is likely to be of no profit to him. Where he used to be an expensive copy of a Bohemian, he becomes at last as near the genuine thing as any critic, with a wholesome fear of being absolute, would care to pronounce. His one pose is that of the plain-spoken, natural man, in the presence of a snob. Everywhere he is as independent as a parrot or a tramp. In life, few are to be envied so much. For he achieves everything but success. VII The important undergraduate is one who has been thunderstruck by the inferiority of the rest. He cannot, if he would, be rid of the notion. In a large college the distinction between himself and others is cheerfully acknowledged by them, while he leads a painful life. In a small college, for a year or two, he is so handled that he may sometimes wish he were as other men are. At the end of that time he has by contagion created a covey of important men, and now, to his moral, athletic, and intellectual excellence, and his superior school, is added the excellence of being several years older than the majority. He establishes a despotism for the good of the college. He is willing to take the fellows into partnership, makes advances, and, when coyly repulsed, has his sense of importance increased by the knowledge that an opposition exists. His splendour is marred only by the stranger, who mistakes his brass-buttoned blazer for a livery, and finds his pomposity well worthy of such fine old quadrangles,--and requests him with a smile and half a sovereign to exhibit the chapel and the hall, and “tell me who are the swells”! He walks about Oxford with a beautiful satisfaction. “A poor thing, but my own,” he seems to say, as he enters the college gate. Little boys in the street pull off their caps as he passes, and the saucy, imprudent freshman does the same. He rows, he plays football and cricket, he debates, all indifferently, but with such an air that he and even some others for a time believe that he is the life and soul of the college. He has been captain and president of everything, when he finds that there is no further honour open to him, and he muses almost with melancholy. The others find it out somewhat later; he is dejected. Though fallen, he is still majestic. He stalks about like a foxhound in July, or like a rebellious archangel-- Is this the region, this the soil, the clime?... Once more October returns. A new generation of freshmen is invited to tea, and for one glorious hour his old vivacity returns, as he questions, instructs, exhorts. “The President of the O.U.B.C. once said to me, ...” or “When I was in the college boat and we made seven bumps ...”--such are his conjuring terms.