They take things as they find them, and very rarely try to launch out on new lines. They early discover that gregariousness is one of the chief characteristics of an Oxford man. They find it exhibited in the extraordinary number of clubs and societies in each college. Their natural conservatism convinces them that as the forming of clubs is co-existent with university life, they must not hesitate to follow the admirable example of their seniors. With the untiring enthusiasm of youth they concentrate their brains and energies therefore to the formation of new clubs--having already become members of a great percentage of the long-founded university clubs which are open to them. They make the epoch-making discovery that many of their members have cut and dried ideas on politics, and that others are big with new theories on social conditions and the education of the masses. Heedless of the fact that in reality these new theories and political arguments have been discussed and thrashed out by thousands of Oxford men before they were born, they begin in their obsession to institute new clubs--political, musical, literary, debating, social, poetical--clubs of all kinds and conditions. They cultivate gregariousness, if it is not already temperamental, as one of the cardinal virtues. They foregather in each other’s rooms nightly, consume tremendous quantities of tobacco, cake, and coffee, and abide feverishly by every rule of the particular society of which they are the founders. In the eighteenth century the men were just as fond of foregathering; but they laboured under severe disadvantages in connection with the authorities, who looked upon the formation of clubs and societies as something new and consequently revolutionary and dangerous. As an instance of the hide-bound conservatism of the moss-grown powers that were I cannot do better than take the case of Dibdin and the “Lunatics,” a club which was inaugurated at the very end of the eighteenth century. “Several members of several colleges (in the number of whom I was as proud as happy to be enlisted),” wrote Dibdin, “met frequently at each other’s rooms, to talk over and to concoct a code of laws or of regulations for the establishment of a society to be called a ‘Society for Scientific and Literary Disquisition.’ It comprehended a debate and an essay, to be prepared by each member in succession, studiously avoiding, in both, all topics of religious and political controversy. There was not the slightest attempt to beat down any one barrier of university law of regulation throughout our whole code. We were to meet in a hired room, at a private house, and were to indulge in our favourite themes in the most unrestrained manner, without giving ingress to a single stranger. Over and over again was each law revised, corrected, and endeavoured to be rendered as little objectionable as possible. At length, after the final touches, we demanded an interview with the Vice-Chancellors and Proctors; and our