How on earth serious study could be pursued amidst these perpetual broils, to the engendering of which so many prejudices contributed, would be an insoluble mystery but for the probability, suggested by experience of University life in our own day, that the disturbances were confined, in the main, to the wilder spirits, though it may well be that occasionally peaceable persons were sucked into the vortex by the accident of their being abroad at the time, and on the scene of the affray, where their pacific character would receive scant consideration from the angry combatants. Esprit de corps also was a powerful incentive to action, and one from which even Masters were not exempt. To this must be added that the course of study itself seemed expressly devised to foster the belligerent temper. The air was laden with the breath of strife, as the Cambridge term "wrangler," which has survived to our day, plainly testifies. THE HIGHWAY OF LEARNING Let us follow the "poor boy," a technical expression at Oxford, through the stages of his academic career in that University. At the outset two courses were open to his parents or guardians: either he might be sent to a religious foundation like Durham College, where he would be under no obligation to take vows, but an oath would be required of him to honour the monks and assist the electing Church, to whatever station of life it might please God to call him. Or, as was infinitely more usual, he might be settled in a secular school of grammar in charge of a recognized master.