3 This picture of an Oxford row is not, as the general reader might imagine, the mere fiction of the novelist, but the true description of a contest which occurred some few years since; the leading features of which will be (although the names have been, except in one or two instances, studiously suppressed) easily recognised by many of the present sons of Alma Mater who shared in the perils and glory of the battle. To those who are strangers to the sacred city, and these casual effervescences of juvenile spirit, the admirable graphic view of the scene by my friend Bob Transit (see plate) will convey a very correct idea. To the credit of the more respectable and wealthy class of Oxford citizens it should be told, they are now too sensible of their own interest, and, besides, too well-informed to mix with these civil disturbances; the lower orders, therefore, finding themselves unequal to the contest without their support, submit to the _togati_; and thus the civil wars that have raged in Oxford with very little interruption from the days of Alfred seem for the present extinguished. ~259~~ On our arrival at the Mitre, poor Mrs. Peake, half frightened to death, was up and busy in administering to the sufferers various consolatory draughts composed of bishop, and flesh and blood{4} and _rumbooze_; while the chambermaids, and Peake, and the waiters were flying about the house with warm water, and basins, and towels, to the relief of the numerous applicants, who all seemed anxious to wash away the dirty remembrances of the disgusting scene. Hitherto I had been so busily engaged in defending myself and preserving my friends, that I had not a moment for reflection. It has been well observed, that "place an Englishman in the field of battle, no matter what his political feelings, he will fight like a lion, by instinct, or the mere force of example;" so with the narrator of this contest. I had not, up to this time, the least knowledge of the original cause of the row. I have naturally an aversion to pugilistic contests and tumultuous sports, and yet I found by certain bruises, and bumps, and stains of blood, and stiffness of joints, and exhaustion, and the loss of my upper garment, which I had then only just discovered, that I must have borne a _pretty considerable_{5} part in the contest, and carried away no small share of victorious laurels, since I had escaped without any very visible demonstration of my adversaries' prowess; but for this I must acknowledge myself indebted to my late private tutor the Eton cad, Joe Cannon, whose fancy lectures on noseology, and the science of the milling system, had enabled me to 4 Brandy and port wine, half and half. 5 An Oxford phrase. ~260~~defend my bread-basket, cover up my peepers, and keep my nob out of chancery{6}: a merit that all