Such was the sum total of Gibbon’s relations with that worthy and excellent man, for, the following term, he found on his arrival, that he had departed from the college and that another tutor was installed in his place. Of his connection with this second tutor the Magdalen man wrote as follows: “Instead of guiding the studies, and watching over the behaviour of his disciple, I was never summoned to attend even the ceremony of a lecture; and, excepting one voluntary visit to his rooms, during the eight months of his titular office, the tutor and pupil lived in the same college as strangers to each other.” These accusations against the Magdalen discipline have been most heatedly “vindicated” by the Rev. James Hurdis, who declared it to have been more Gibbon’s fault than the Dons’ that he was not looked after, because he gave flippant excuses which he dubbed formal apologies, and had not the patience to continue the course of lectures arranged and delivered by his tutors. These vindicatory arguments do not hold water. All men will evade authority if they can. Therefore it is surely the place of the tutor to put his foot down and issue orders instead of letting his pupil wander at will and do no work. In all the many descriptions of a day in the life of a Smart, or an ordinary gentleman commoner, or the river man, no references are to be found as to their doing any work. On the contrary, Skinner said that “Aristotle has been deserted for the bottle,” and launched into descriptions of the empty schools. With tutors who considered politics and consequent individual preferment of far greater importance than the mere conning of pupils’ work, it is not to be wondered at that the only men who did any work were those who were “bookish” by nature and preferred a quiet studious life to one of revelry and slacking. For the most part these worked independently of Dons, entirely of their own volition. As far as a good degree went, it was utterly useless; for the method of passing university examinations was, to put it mildly, a farce. The veracity of Vicesimus Knox is not for one moment to be questioned, so that the following account may be taken as a fair example of the customs of the times.