The next division of the genus Don is the public lecturer, in regard to whom there are, so Amhurst informed us, a number of statutes concerning the public lecturers in all faculties: appointing, with the utmost exactness, where they shall read, when they shall read, what they shall read, how they shall read, and to whom they shall read. “All these (as I have frequently observed) are almost totally neglected; out of twenty public lectures, not above three or four being observed at all, and they not statutably observed: for the auditors, who belong to the same college with the lecturer in any faculty, do not wait upon him to the school, where he reads, and back again, as they ought to do; so far from it, that not one in ten goes to hear these lectures, nor do they (who do attend) take down what they hear in writing; neither do they (I believe) diligently read over the same author at home, which the public professor undertook to explain; nor are persons punished (as the statutes require) for any of these omissions.” Even if it be admitted that three or four is an exaggeratedly low estimate of the number of these lectures, and that the “auditors” are just as lazy as the men who deliver them, yet it is not to be wondered at that the Undergraduates did not read over the authors, or write down what they heard. All the lectures were delivered by Dons who knew next to nothing about their subject, and they were in consequence very tedious and worthless affairs. The lectureships were bestowed “upon such as are utterly and notoriously ignorant of them, and never made them their study in their lives. They are given away, as pensions and sinecures, to any body that can make a good interest for them, without any respect to his abilities or character in general, or to what faculty in particular he has apply’d his mind. I have known a profligate _debauchee_ chosen professor of moral philosophy; and a fellow, who never look’d upon the stars soberly in his life, professor of astronomy; we have had history professors, who never read anything to qualify them for it, but Tom Thumb, Jack the Giant-killer, Don Belicanis of Greece, and such like valuable records; we have had likewise numberless professors of Greek, Hebrew and Arabick, who scarce understood their mother tongue; and, not long ago, a famous gamester and stock-jobber was elected to M--g--t, professor of divinity; so great it seems is the analogy between dusting of cushions, and shaking of elbows, or between squand’ring away of estates, and saving of souls!” [Illustration: A SOUTH VIEW OF THE OBSERVATORY AT OXFORD.] Terrae Filius was moved to the above denunciations and reminiscences of lecturers, who, he said, were elected perhaps on the principle that “he can do no mischief; ergo, he shall be our man,” by the receipt of a letter from a Wadham man who recounted his own personal experiences of lecturers and their ways. It runs thus:-- “WADHAM COLLEGE, _Jan. 22, 1720_.