very curious
at that time. Often the elections resembled parliamentary elections,
far more regard being paid to political or theological partisanship
than to scientific qualifications. Every M.A. had a vote, and these
voters were scattered all over the country. Canvassing was carried on
quite openly. Travelling expenses were freely paid, and lists were
kept in each college of the men who could be depended on to vote for
the liberal or the conservative candidate. Imagine a professor of
medicine or of Greek being elected because he was a liberal! Some
appointments rested with the Prime Minister, or, as it was called, the
Crown; and it was quoted to the honour of the Duke of Wellington, that
he, when Chancellor of the University, once insisted that the electors
should elect the best man, and they had to yield, though there were
electors who would declare their own candidate the best man, whatever
the opinion of really qualified judges might be. All this election
machinery is much improved now, though an infallible system of
electing the best men has not yet been discovered. One single elector,
who is not troubled by too tender a conscience, may even now vitiate a
whole election; to say nothing of the painful position in which an
elector is placed, if he has to vote against a personal friend or a
member of his own college, particularly when the feeling that it is
dishonourable to disclose the vote of each elector is no longer strong
enough to protect the best interests of the University.

It took me some time before I could gain an insight into all this. The
old system passed away before my very eyes, not without evident
friction between my different friends, and then came the difficulty of
learning to understand the working of the new machinery which had been
devised and sanctioned by Parliament. Reformers arose even among the
Heads of Houses, as, for instance, Dr. Jeune, the Master of Pembroke
College, who was credited with having _rajeuni l'ancienne universite_.
But he was by no means the only, or even the chief actor in University
reform. Many of my personal friends, such as Dr. Tait, afterwards
Archbishop of Canterbury, the Rev. H. G. Liddell, afterwards Dean of
Christ Church, Professor Baden-Powell, and the Rev. G. H. S. Johnson,
afterwards Dean of Wells, with Stanley and Goldwin Smith as
Secretaries, did honest service in the various Royal and Parliamentary
Commissions, and spent much of their valuable time in servin