Some one has said that a University, primarily considered, is less a school than an atmosphere. This applies with peculiar force to Oxford. Unlike American or German Universities, Oxford aims not primarily to provide instruction, but rather to provide an atmosphere for the many-sided Oxford life. For centuries, Oxford has been the training school of the English gentleman. It stands pre-eminently for culture and good breeding, for a liberal education in the widest and best sense, not merely the knowledge that comes from books, but especially and above all for the knowledge of men and affairs. It is the difference between a training to make a living and a training to make a life, to put the best _into_ life rather than to make the most _out_ of it. The highest Oxford ideal is the scholar _and_ the gentleman, but the gentleman first of all. A faithful reflex of English society, Oxford reflects its most marked characteristic conservatism. Yet underneath this stratum of healthy conservatism runs the current of twentieth-century life. Hence its uniqueness, its complexity, its paradoxes. Conservative by force of tradition and custom, Oxford breathes the liberal and tolerant spirit of the twentieth century; exclusive and aristocratic, the Oxford life is nevertheless very democratic; open to all, Oxford is not for all people; faithful to her heritage of the Past, Oxford is still a leader in the Present. [Sidenote: The ‘system’.] Yet, oddly enough, from the undergraduate’s point of view, the University is practically a thing apart, an abstract intangible something which touches the life of the well-behaved ‘undergrad’ only at examination time, that is to say, twice during his Oxford career, or on that more ceremonious occasion, ‘degree-day.’ The uninitiated stranger, searching for information in the _Student’s Handbook_, is told that the ‘University is a body corporate invested with all the usual powers of corporations and also with various peculiar privileges, such as the right of exercising jurisdiction, civil and criminal, over its members, the right of returning two representatives to the House of Commons, and the power of conferring degrees’. Not a word about the teaching Faculty of the University or about courses of study. Instead, an institution whose main function, as far as the student is concerned, is to hold examinations and to confer degrees. Further inquiry leads to the College. The collegiate system, both in regard to undergraduate life and undergraduate instruction, is the counterpart to the more formal functions of the University. Here is a dualism between College and University unknown to most foreign students,—each a separate, independent unit, a University existing side by side with twenty-one corporate Societies, each leading an independent existence, and yet most intimately connected with one another. If an attempt is here made to sketch this complex and intricate system in its barest outlines, it is with a full