Liberal
candidate--J. D. Lewis--warmly pressed my hand, and, looking at my
rosette, hoped that he might count on my vote and interest. Not for the
world would I have revealed the damning fact that I was a voteless
undergraduate.

In connexion with the Election of 1874, my tutor--C. A. Fyffe--told me a
curious story. He was canvassing the Borough of Woodstock on behalf of
George Brodrick, then an academic Liberal of the deepest dye. Woodstock
was what was called an "Agricultural Borough"--practically a division of
the County--and in an outlying district, in a solitary cottage, the
canvassers found an old man whom his neighbours reported to be a
Radical. He did not disclaim the title, but no inducements could induce
him to go to the poll. Gradually, under persistent cross-examination, he
revealed his mind. He was old enough to remember the days before the
Reform Bill of 1832. His father had been an ardent reformer. Everyone
believed that, if only the Bill were passed, hunger and poverty and
misery would be abolished, and the poor would come by their own. He
said--and this was the curious point--that firearms were stored in his
father's cottage, to be used in a popular rising if the Bill were
rejected by the Lords. Well, the Lords had submitted, and the Bill had
been passed; and we had got our reform--and no one was any better off.
The poor were still poor, and there was misery and oppression, and the
great people had it all their own way. He had got his roof over his
head, and "a bit of meat in his pot," and it was no good hoping for
anything more, and he was never going to take any part in politics
again. It was a notable echo from the voices which, in 1832, had
proclaimed the arrival of the Millennium.

Oxford in those days was full of Celebrities. Whenever one's friends
came "up" to pay one a visit, one was pretty certain to be able, in a
casual stroll up the High or round Magdalen Walks or Christ Church
Meadows, to point out someone of whom they had heard before. I have
already spoken of Liddell and Pusey and Liddon and Acland and Burgon
and Henry Smith. Chief perhaps among our celebrities was Ruskin, who had
lately been made Slade Professor of Fine Art, and whose Inaugural
Lecture was incessantly on the lips of such undergraduates as cared for
glorious declamation.

"There is a destiny now possible to us--the highest ever set before a
nation to be accepted or refused. We are still undegenerate in race; a
race min