My father eventually selected Alban Hall--a singular and hardly a judicious choice in any case, but which under the circumstances, as they subsequently arose, proved a disastrous one. My father’s financial position was at the time such, that it would have seemed reasonable that he should have been in a great measure guided in his choice by the consideration of expense. But such was not the case. For Alban Hall was at that time by no means a specially inexpensive place of academical residence. No! the ruling motive was to place me under Whately, who had about four years previously been appointed by Lord Granville Principal of Alban Hall. My father, as I have mentioned, was a “Liberal,” and Whately’s Liberalism was the point in his character by which he was most known to the world in general. I do not think that any personal acquaintance, or even contact, had ever existed between my father and Whately. The connecting link I take to have been Whately’s friend Senior. Whately’s Liberalism certainly, and, I think I may say, my father’s also, would have made excellent Conservatism at the present day. But in those days the new Principal of Alban Hall stood out in strong contrast with the intellectual attitude and habits of thought of Oxford, And this was the leading motive of my father’s choice. I know not how the case may be now, but in those days it was a decided disadvantage socially and academically to belong to any one of the “halls,” instead of to a college. But of all this side of Oxford life, my father, who had been a New College man in the days when New College exercised its ancient privilege of presenting its members for their degree without submitting them to any examination in the schools, knew nothing. In his day the New College man before the Vice-Chancellor for his degree, instead of using the formula prescribed for every other member of the university to the effect that having satisfied the examiners he begged his degree (_peto gradum_), said, “Having satisfied my college, I demand my degree” (_postulo gradum_). This has long been voluntarily abandoned by New College, which on the enactment of the new statute for examinations of course saw that the retention of it necessarily excluded them from “honours.” But in the old day it had inevitably the effect of causing New College men to live very much in a world of their own.