Fellows, the statute, being not constructive, but express, could not be evaded except by stealth, and by an application of the aphorism then current, that he might hold anything who would hold his tongue. The effect of this, celibacy being no longer the rule, was to make all the Fellows look forward to the benefices, of a number of which each College was the patron, and upon which they could marry. Thus devotion to a life of study or education in College, had a Fellow been inclined to it, was impossible, under the ordinary conditions of modern life. Idleness, intemperance, and riot were rife among the students, as we learn from the novels and memoirs of the day. Especially were they the rule among the noblemen and gentlemen-commoners, who were privileged by their birth and wealth, and to whom by the servility of the Dons every license was allowed. Some Colleges took only gentlemen-commoners, who paid high fees and did what they pleased. All Souls' took no students at all, and became a mere club which, by a strange perversion of a clause in their statutes, was limited to men of high family. The University as a teaching and examining body had fallen into a dead swoon. Few of the Professors even went through the form of lecturing, and the statutory obligation of attendance was wholly disregarded by the students. The form of mediæval disputations was kept up by the farcical repetition of strings of senseless syllogisms, which were handed down from generation to generation of students. The very nomenclature of the system had become unmeaning. Candidates for the theological degree paced the Divinity School for an hour, nominally challenging opponents to disputation, but the door was locked by the Bedel, that no opponent might appear. Examinations were held, but the candidates, by feeing the University officer, were allowed to choose their own examiners, and they treated the examiner after the ordeal. The two questions, "What is the meaning of Golgotha?" and "Who founded University College?" comprised the examination upon which Lord Eldon took his degree. A little of that elegant scholarship, with the power of writing Latin verses, of which Addison was the cynosure, was the most of which Oxford could boast. Even this there could hardly have been had not the learned languages happened to have formed an official part of the equipment of the clerical profession. Of science, or the mental habit which science forms, there was none. Such opportunities for study, such libraries, such groves, a livelihood so free from care could scarcely fail, now and then, to give birth to a learned man, an Addison, a Lowth, a Thomas Warton, an Elmsley, a Martin Routh. * * * * *