To say that Oxford is Conservative is almost to state an axiom. The ‘town’ is Conservative; the University is Conservative; the students are Conservative. Conscious of this characteristic, Oxford cultivates it to some extent as an ideal. Pointing to history, and emphasizing results, it justifies Conservatism, yet its Conservatism should not be magnified. The town, rejoicing for the present in the artistic inconvenience of horse-cars and some other like antiquities, nevertheless continues a study and a discussion of motor-trams and motor-’buses, and will doubtless some day adopt that form of conveyance which it decides best. Likewise the University, feeling a certain prejudice against innovations and a certain suspicion of new methods and practices, looks with a critical eye upon new theories, new educational ideas and suggestions, and yet it is generally ready to appropriate and to apply those productions of modern thought and genius which prove themselves, by surviving the experimental stage, really worth while. Oxford Conservatism is essentially a thinking attitude. In the realm of politics, ‘Socialism’ as it is commonly cried in many of the Continental Universities, is tabooed in Oxford. ‘Conservatives’—and every Oxford man has his politics—outnumber ‘Liberals’, although not by any great majority. Oxford has seldom stood for other than Tory principles; and yet one has not far to look in English history to see how time and again reform movements and the promulgation of new and radical ideas have originated and found their support in ‘the Universities’. [Sidenote: Comfort.] Oxford would not be English if it did not emphasize comfort—personal comfort. True, it has many inconveniences and lacks some of the fittings which add to the perfection of modern buildings. It is hard to reconcile old buildings and modern conveniences. Lamp and candle still shed the only light in at least one College—but this is not the rule; nearly every College building in Oxford has been ‘wired’, and table-lamps as well as drop-light ‘switch on’ in student rooms at the ‘press of the button’. Modern baths and showers (except a few new buildings) and a University gymnasium are wanting; but every man has his ‘tub’; and the gymnasium ‘though missing is not missed’—for all outdoors is the Oxford gymnasium. For boxing, wrestling, and fencing there are private gymnasiums. But for the solid everyday comfort of well-furnished apartments, of good cooking and excellent service, for freedom from bother with details, for convenient arrangements for athletic sports and for social life, Oxford provides as by a high art. The ‘strenuous life’ is frequently better known by its absence than otherwise, and many people in Oxford dislike even the sound of those words; yet there is a clear track and every opportunity for the man who insists on being strenuous. [Sidenote: Artistic surroundings.]