elow the rank of a gentleman commoner, and our velvet
cap was the cap of liberty. A tradition prevailed that some of our
predecessors had spoken Latin declamations in the hall; but of this
ancient custom no vestige remained: the obvious methods of public
exercises and examinations were totally unknown; and I have never heard
that either the president or the society interfered in the private
economy of the tutors and their pupils.

The silence of the Oxford professors, which deprives the youth of public
instruction, is imperfectly supplied by the tutors, as they are styled,
of the several colleges. Instead of confining themselves to a single
science, which had satisfied the ambition of Burman or Bernoulli, they
teach, or promise to teach, either history or mathematics, or ancient
literature, or moral philosophy; and as it is possible that they may
be defective in all, it is highly probable that of some they will be
ignorant. They are paid, indeed, by voluntary contributions; but
their appointment depends on the head of the house: their diligence
is voluntary, and will consequently be languid, while the pupils
themselves, or their parents, are not indulged in the liberty of choice
or change. The first tutor into whose hands I was resigned appears to
have been one of the best of the tribe: Dr. Waldegrave was a learned and
pious man, of a mild disposition, strict morals, and abstemious life,
who seldom mingled in the politics or the jollity of the college. But
his knowledge of the world was confined to the university; his learning
was of the last, rather than the present age; his temper was indolent;
his faculties, which were not of the first rate, had been relaxed by
the climate, and he was satisfied, like his fellows, with the slight
and superficial discharge of an important trust. As soon as my tutor had
sounded the insufficiency of his pupil in school-learning, he proposed
that we should read every morning from ten to eleven the comedies
of Terence. The sum of my improvement in the university of Oxford is
confined to three or four Latin plays; and even the study of an elegant
classic, which might have been illustrated by a comparison of ancient
and modern theatres, was reduced to a dry and literal interpretation of
the author's text. During the first weeks I constantly attended these
lessons in my tutor's room; but as they appeared equally devoid of
profit and pleasure I was once tempted to try the experiment of a formal