them. There is every year a limited number of boys from the best
schools who would do credit to any University. But a large number of
the young men who are sent up to matriculate at Oxford are not up to
an academic standard. Unless the colleges agree to stand empty for a
year or two, they cannot help themselves, but have to keep the
standard of the matriculation examination low, and in fact do, to a
great extent, the work that ought to have been done at school. Think
of boys being sent up to Oxford, who, after having spent on an average
six years at a public school, are yet unable to read a line of Greek
or Latin which they have not seen before. Yet so it was, and so it is,
unless I am very much misinformed. It is easy for some colleges who
keep up a high standard of matriculation to turn out first-class men;
the real burden falls on the colleges and tutors who have to work hard
to bring their pupils up to the standard of a pass degree, and few
people have any idea how little a pass degree may mean. Those tutors
have indeed hard work to do and get little credit for it, though their
devotion to their college and their pupils is highly creditable. Fifty
years ago even a pass degree was more difficult than it is now,
because candidates were not allowed to pass in different subjects at
different times, but the whole examination had to be done all at once,
or not at all.

I had naturally made it a rule at Oxford to stand aloof from the
conflict of parties, whether academical, theological, or political. I
had my own work to do, and it did not seem to me good taste to obtrude
my opinions, which naturally were different from those prevalent at
Oxford. Most people like to wash their dirty linen among themselves;
and though I gladly talked over such matters with my friends who often
consulted me, I did not feel called upon to join in the fray. I lived
through several severe crises at Oxford, and though I had some
intimate friends on either side, I remained throughout a looker on.

Seldom has a University passed through such a complete change as
Oxford has since the year 1854. And yet the change was never violent,
and the University has passed through its ordeal really rejuvenated
and reinvigorated. It has been said that our constitution has now
become too democratic, and that a University should be ruled by a
Senatus rather than by a Juventus. This is true to a certain extent.
There has been too much unrest, too constant chang