t was indeed a strong man, well
fitted for any work in after life. He would not necessarily turn out
an original thinker, a scholar, or a discoverer in physical science,
but he would know what it was to know anything thoroughly. To take
honours at the same time in classics and mathematics required strength
and grasp, and the effort was certainly considerable, as I found out
when occasionally I read a Greek or Latin author with a young
undergraduate friend. What struck me most was the accurate knowledge
a candidate acquired of special authors and special books, but also
the want of that familiarity with the language, Greek or Latin, which
would enable him to read any new author with comparative ease. The
young men whom I knew at the time they went in for their final
examination, were certainly well grounded in classics, and what they
knew they knew thoroughly.

The personal relations existing between undergraduates and their
tutors were very intimate. A tutor took a pride in his pupils, and
often became their friend for life. The teaching was almost private
teaching, and the idea of reading a written lecture to a class in
college did not exist as yet. It was real teaching with questions and
answers; while lectures, written and read out, were looked down upon
as good enough for professors, but entirely useless for the schools.
The social tone of the University was excellent. Many of the tutors
and of the undergraduates came of good families, and the struggle for
life, or for a college living, or college office, was not, as yet, so
fierce as it became afterwards. College tutors toiled on for life, and
certainly did their work to the last most conscientiously. There was
perhaps little ambition, little scheming or pushing, but the work of
the University, such as the country would have it, was well done. If
the Honour-Lists were small, the number of utter failures also was not
very large.

For a young scholar, like myself, who came to live at Oxford in those
distant days, the peace and serenity of life were most congenial,
though several of my friends were among the first who began to fret,
and wished for more work to be done and for better use to be made of
the wealth and the opportunities of the University. My impression at
that time was the same as it has been ever since, that a reform of the
Universities was impossible till the public schools had been
thoroughly reformed. The Universities must take what the schools send