Professors ruin one another; each standing with his mouth open, to leap at any bone thrown amongst them from the table of the "Burschen"; all hating, fighting, calumniating each other, until the land is sick of its base knowledgemongers, and would vomit the loathsome crew, were any natural channel open to their instincts of abhorrence. The most important of the Scottish Professorships-those which are fundamentally morticed to the moral institutions of the land-are upon the footing of Oxford tutorships, as regards emoluments; that is, they are not suffered to keep up a precarious mendicant existence, upon the alms of the students, or upon their fickle admirations. It is made imperative upon a candidate for admission into the ministry of the Scottish Kirk, that he shall show a certificate of attendance through a given number of seasons at given lectures.

The next item in the quarterly (or, technically, the term) bills of Oxford is for servants. This, in my college, and, I believe, in all others, amounted, nominally, to two guineas a year. That sum, however, was paid to a principal servant, whom, perhaps, you seldom or never saw; the actual attendance upon yourself being performed by one of his deputies; and to this deputy-who is, in effect, a factotum, combining in his single person all the functions of chambermaid, valet, waiter at meals, and porter or errand-boy-by the custom of the place and your own sense of propriety, you cannot but give something or other in the shape of perquisites. I was told, on entering, that half a guinea a quarter was the customary allowance, the same sum, in fact, as was levied by the college for his principal; but I gave mine a guinea a quarter, thinking that little enough for the many services he performed; and others, who were richer than myself, I dare say, often gave much more. Yet, sometimes, it struck me, from the gratitude which his looks testified, on my punctual payment of this guinea,—for it was the only bill with regard to which I troubled myself to practise any severe punctuality,-that perhaps some thoughtless young man might give him less, or might even forget to give anything; and, at all events, I have reason to believe that half that sum would have contented him. These minutiæ I record purposely; my immediate object being to

VOL. II

D

give a rigorous statement of the real expenses incident to an English university education, partly as a guide to the calculations of parents, and partly as an answer to the somewhat libellous exaggerations which are current on this subject, in times like these, when even the truth itself, and received in a spirit of candour the most indulgent, may be all too little to defend these venerable seats of learning from the ruin which seems brooding over them. Yet, no! Abominable is the language of despair even in a desperate situation. And, therefore, Oxford, ancient mother! and thou, Cambridge, twin-light of England! be vigilant and erect, for the enemy stands at all your gates! Two centuries almost have passed since the boar was within your vineyards, laying waste and desolating your heritage. Yet that storm was not final, nor that eclipse total. May this also prove but a trial and a shadow of affliction! which affliction, may it prove to you, mighty incorporations, what, sometimes, it is to us, poor, frail homunculi- -a process of purification, a solemn and oracular warning! And, when that cloud is overpast, then, rise, ancient powers, wiser and better-ready, like the λauradηpopor of old, to enter upon a second stadium, and to transmit the sacred torch through a second period of twice1 five hundred years. So prays a loyal alumnus, whose presumption, if any be, in taking upon himself a monitory tone, is privileged by zeal and filial anxiety.

To return, however, into the track from which I have digressed. The reader will understand that any student is at liberty to have private servants of his own, as many and of what denomination he pleases. This point, as many others of a merely personal bearing, when they happen to stand in no relation to public discipline, neither the University nor the particular college of the student feels summoned or even authorized to deal with. Neither, in fact, does any other University in Europe; and why, then, notice the case? Simply thus: if the Oxford discipline, in this particular chapter, has nothing special or peculiar about it, yet the case to which it applies has, and is almost exclusively found in

1 Oxford may confessedly claim a duration of that extent; and the pretensions of Cambridge, in that respect, if less aspiring, are, however, as I believe, less accurately determined.

our Universities. On the Continent it happens most rarely that a student has any funds disposable for luxuries so eminently such as grooms or footmen; but at Oxford and Cambridge the case occurs often enough to attract notice from the least vigilant eye. And thus we find set down to the

credit account of other Universities the non-existence of luxury in this or other modes, whilst, meantime, it is well known to the fair inquirer that each or all are indulgences not at all or so much as in idea proscribed by the sumptuary edicts of those Universities, but, simply, by the lower scale of their general revenues. And this lower scale, it will

be said how do you account for that? I answer, not so much by the general inferiority of Continental Europe to Great Britain in diffusive wealth (though that argument goes for something, it being notorious that, whilst immoderate wealth, concentrated in a small number of hands, exists in various continental states upon a larger scale than with us, moderately large estates, on the other hand, are, with them, as one to two hundred, or even two hundred and fifty, in comparison with ours), but chiefly upon this fact, which is too much overlooked, that the foreign Universities are not peopled from the wealthiest classes, which are the classes either already noble, or wishing to become such. And why is that? Purely from the vicious constitution of society on the Continent, where all the fountains of honour lie in the military profession or in the diplomatic. We English, haters and revilers of ourselves beyond all precedent, disparagers of our own eminent advantages beyond all sufferance of honour or good sense, and daily playing into the hands of foreign enemies, who hate us out of mere envy or shame, have amongst us some hundreds of writers who will die or suffer martyrdom upon this proposition—that aristocracy, and the spirit and prejudices of aristocracy, are more operative (more effectually and more extensively operative) amongst ourselves than in any other known society of men. Now, I, who believe all errors to arise in some narrow, partial, or angular view of truth, am seldom disposed to meet any sincere affirmation by a blank, unmodified denial. Knowing, therefore, that some acute observers do really believe this doctrine as to the aristocratic forces, and the way in which they

mould English society, I cannot but suppose that some symptoms do really exist of such a phenomenon; and the only remark I shall here make on the case is this, that, very often, where any force or influence reposes upon deep realities, and upon undisturbed foundations, there will be the least heard of loquacious and noisy expressions of its power; which expressions arise most, not where the current is most violent, but where (being possibly the weakest) it is most fretted with resistance.

In England, the very reason why the aristocratic feeling makes itself so sensibly felt and so distinctly an object of notice to the censorious observer is, because it maintains a troubled existence amongst counter and adverse influences, so many and so potent. This might be illustrated abundantly. But, as respects the particular question before me, it will be sufficient to say this: With us the profession and exercise of knowledge, as a means of livelihood, is honourable; on the Continent it is not so. The knowledge, for instance, which is embodied in the three learned professions, does, with us, lead to distinction and civil importance; no man can pretend to deny this; nor, by consequence, that the Professors personally take rank with the highest order of gentlemen. Are they not, I demand, everywhere with us on the same footing, in point of rank and consideration, as those who bear the king's commission in the army and navy? Can this be affirmed of the Continent, either generally, or, indeed, partially? I say, no. Let us take Germany as an illustration. Many towns (for anything I know, all) present us with a regular bisection of the resident notables, or wealthier class, into two distinct (often hostile) coteries: one being composed of those who are "noble"; the other, of families equally well educated and accomplished, but not, in the continental sense, "noble." The meaning and value of the word is so entirely misapprehended by the best English writers,— being, in fact, derived from our own way of applying it,—that it becomes important to ascertain its true value. A❝nobility which is numerous enough to fill a separate ball-room in every sixth-rate town, it needs no argument to show, cannot be a nobility in any English sense. In fact, an edelmann or nobleman, in the German sense, is strictly what we mean by

a born gentleman; with this one only difference, that, whereas, with us, the rank which denominates a man such passes off by shades so insensible, and almost infinite, into the ranks below, that it becomes impossible to assign it any strict demarkation or lines of separation, on the contrary, the Continental noble points to certain fixed barriers, in the shape of privileges, which divide him, per saltum, from those who are below his own order. But, were it not for this one legal benefit of accurate circumscription and slight favour, the Continental noble, whether Baron of Germany, Count of France, or Prince of Sicily and of Russia, is simply on a level with the common landed esquire of Britain, and not on a level in very numerous cases. Such being the case, how paramount must be the spirit of aristocracy in Continental society! Our haute noblesse—our genuine nobility, who are such in the general feeling of their compatriots-will do that which the phantom of nobility of the Continent will not: the spurious nobles of Germany will not mix, on equal terms, with their untitled fellow-citizens living in the same city and in the same style as themselves; they will not meet them in the same ball or concert-room. Our great territorial nobility, though sometimes forming exclusive circles (but not, however, upon any principle of high birth), do so daily. They mix as equal partakers in the same amusements of races, balls, musical assemblies, with the baronets (or élite of the gentry); with the landed esquires (or middle gentry); with the superior order of tradesmen (who, in Germany, are absolute ciphers, for political weight, or social consideration, but, with us, constitute the lower and broader stratum of the nobilitas,1 or gentry). The obscure baronage of Germany, it is undeniable,

1 It may be necessary to inform some readers that the word noble, by which so large a system of imposition and fraud, as to the composition of foreign society, has long been practised upon the credulity of the British, corresponds to our word gentlemanly (or, rather, to the vulgar word genteel, if that word were ever used legally, or extra gradum), not merely upon the argument of its virtual and operative value in the general estimate of men (that is, upon the argument that a count, baron, &c., does not, qua such, command any deeper feeling of respect or homage than a British esquire), but also upon the fact, that, originally, in all English registers, as, for instance, in the Oxford matriculation registers, all the upper gentry (knights, esquires, &c.) are technically designated by the word nobiles.-See Chamberlayne, &c.