And yet in another form the 'Act' survives in our familiar Commemoration; the relation of this to the 'Act' seems to be somewhat as follows. The Sheldonian Theatre was opened, as will be described later (p. 81), with a great literary and musical performance, a 'sort of dedication of the Theatre'; this was called 'Encaenia'.[12] So pleased was the University with the performance that the Chancellor next year (1670) ordered that it should be repeated annually, on the Friday before the 'Act'. From the very first there was a tendency to confuse the two ceremonies; even the accurate antiquarian, Antony Wood, speaks of music as part of 'the Act', which was really performed at the preliminary gathering, the Encaenia. The new function gradually grew in importance, and additions were made to it; the munificent Lord Crewe, prince-bishop of Durham, who enjoys an unenviable immortality in the pages of Macaulay, and a more fragrant if less lasting memory in Besant's charming romance _Dorothy Forster_, left some of his great wealth for the Creweian Oration, in which annual honour is done to the University Benefactors at the Commemoration. Hence, while the customs of the 'Act' became more and more meaningless and neglected, the Encaenia became more and more popular, until finally the older ceremony was merged in the newer one. In our Commemoration degree-giving still takes place, along with recitation of prize poems and the paying of honour to benefactors. The degrees are all honorary, but they are submitted to the House in the same way as ordinary degrees; the Vice-Chancellor puts the question to the Convocation, just as the Proctor submits the 'grace' to Congregation, and in theory a vote is taken on the creation of the new D.C.L.s, just as in theory the Proctors take the votes as to the admission of new M.A.s. Commemoration may be, as John Richard Green said, 'Oxford in masquerade'; there may be 'grand incongruities, Abyssinian heroes robed in literary scarlet, degrees conferred by the suffrages of virgins in pink bonnets and blue, a great academical ceremony drowned in an atmosphere of Aristophanean (_sic_) chaff'. But the chaff is the legitimate successor of the burlesque performance of the Terrae Filius at the old 'Act', and the degrees are submitted to the House with the old formula; even the presence of ladies would have been no surprise to our predecessors of 200 years ago, however much they would have astonished our mediaeval founders and benefactors; in the Sheldonian from the first the gallery under the organ was always set apart for 'ladies and gentlewomen'. 'Oxford', to quote J.R. Green once again, 'is simply young', but when he goes on to say 'she is neither historic nor theological nor academical', he exaggerates; the charm of Oxford lies in the fact that her youth is at home among survivals historic, theological, and academical; and the old survives while the new flourishes. FOOTNOTES: