were not allowed to speak in court--the farmer and the pedestrian. Most of these abuses were rectified long before the end of the reign. The Universities were slowly emerging from the depths to which they had sunk in the eighteenth century, when they neither taught nor examined nor maintained discipline. We all remember Gibbon's description of the Fellows of his College, 'whose dull but deep potations excused the brisker intemperance of youth.' These gentlemen were most of them waiting for College livings, to which they were allowed to carry off, as a solatium, some dozens of College port. Cambridge, it is only fair to say, never fell quite so low as Oxford, and began to reform itself earlier. The Mathematical and Classical Triposes were both founded before Queen Victoria's accession. But public opinion thought that the University authorities needed some stimulation from outside, and in 1850 a Royal Commission was appointed for Oxford, and two years later another for Cambridge. The Reports of these two Commissions are very amusing, especially that of the Oxford Board, which lets itself go in a refreshing style. Its members had received provocation. The Governing Bodies generally refused to answer their questions. Some of the Colleges had exacted an oath from new Fellows to reveal nothing about the affairs of the College. The Dean of Christ Church declined to answer letters from the Royal Commission; the President of Magdalen replied that he was not aware that he had misused his revenues, and begged to close the correspondence. These dignified potentates are not spared in the Report. The Cambridge Report, which is much more polite, did good service by recommending the foundation of a medical school. Changes later, such as the abolition of all Anglican privileges, and the permission of Fellows to marry, came later. In the case of the Universities, as in that of the Law, the improvements between 1837 and the first Jubilee were enormous. The Civil Service, it is almost needless to say, was a sanctuary of aristocratic jobbery. The Clerks were languid gentlemen with long whiskers, who arrived late and departed early from their Offices.