assist at the conference. Tom Staple was the Tutor of Lazarus
and, moreover, a great man at Oxford. Though universally known by a
species of nomenclature so very undignified, Tom Staple was one who
maintained a high dignity in the university. He was, as it were, the
leader of the Oxford tutors, a body of men who consider themselves
collectively as being by very little, if at all, second in importance
to the heads themselves. It is not always the case that the master,
or warden, or provost, or principal can hit it off exactly with his
tutor. A tutor is by no means indisposed to have a will of his own.
But at Lazarus they were great friends and firm allies at the time of
which we are writing.

Tom Staple was a hale, strong man of about forty-five, short in
stature, swarthy in face, with strong, sturdy black hair and crisp
black beard of which very little was allowed to show itself in shape
of whiskers. He always wore a white neckcloth, clean indeed, but
not tied with that scrupulous care which now distinguishes some of
our younger clergy. He was, of course, always clothed in a seemly
suit of solemn black. Mr. Staple was a decent cleanly liver, not
over-addicted to any sensuality; but nevertheless a somewhat warmish
hue was beginning to adorn his nose, the peculiar effect, as his
friends averred, of a certain pipe of port introduced into the cellars
of Lazarus the very same year in which the tutor entered it as a
freshman. There was also, perhaps, a little redolence of port wine, as
it were the slightest possible twang, in Mr. Staple's voice.

In these latter days Tom Staple was not a happy man; university
reform had long been his bugbear, and now was his bane. It was not
with him, as with most others, an affair of politics, respecting
which, when the need existed, he could, for parties' sake or on
behalf of principle, maintain a certain amount of necessary zeal;
it was not with him a subject for dilettante warfare and courteous,
commonplace opposition. To him it was life and death. The _status
quo_ of the university was his only idea of life, and any reformation
was as bad to him as death. He would willingly have been a martyr in
the cause, had the cause admitted of martyrdom.

At the present day, unfortunately, public affairs will allow of no
martyrs, and therefore it is that there is such a deficiency of zeal.
Could gentlemen of L10,000 a year have died on their own door-steps
in defence of protection, no doubt some