em
honorary degrees, felt deeply offended. Sir Arthur Helps declared that
he came to receive an honour, and received an insult. Well do I
remember the Rev. Dr. Salmon, who was asked where he had left his
lobster sauce; Dr. Wendell Holmes was shouted at, whether he had come
across the Atlantic in his "One Hoss Shay"; the Right Hon. W. H.
Smith, First Lord of the Admiralty, was presented with a Pinafore, and
Lord Wolseley with a Black Watch. There was a certain amount of wit in
these allusions, and the best way to take the academic row and riot
was Tennyson's, who told me on coming out that "he felt all the time
as if standing on the shingle of the sea shore, the storm howling, and
the spray covering him right and left." After a time, however, these
_Saturnalia_ had to be stopped, and they were stopped in a curious
way, by giving ladies seats among the undergraduates. It speaks well
for them that their regard for the ladies restrained them, and made
them behave like gentlemen.

The reign of the Heads of Houses, which was in full force when I first
settled in Oxford, began to wane when it was least expected. There
had, however, been grumblings among the Fellows and Tutors at Oxford,
who felt themselves aggrieved by the self-willed interference of the
Heads of Colleges in their tutorial work, and, it may be, resented the
airs assumed by men who, after all, were their equals, and in no sense
their betters, in the University.

Society distinctly profited when Fellows and Tutors were allowed to
marry, and when several of the newly-elected of the Heads of Houses,
having wives and daughters, opened their houses, and had interesting
people to dine with them from the neighbourhood and from London.

The Deanery of Christ Church was not only made architecturally into a
new house, but under Dr. Liddell, with his charming wife and
daughters, became a social centre not easily rivalled anywhere else.
There one met not only royalty, the young Prince of Wales, but many
eminent writers, artists, and political men from London, Gladstone,
Disraeli, Richmond, Ruskin, and many others. Another bright house of
the new era was that of the Principal of Brasenose, Dr. Cradock, and
his cheerful and most amusing wife. There one often met such men as
Lord Russell, Sir George C. Lewis, young Harcourt, and many more. She
was the true Dresden china marquise, with her amusing sallies, which
no doubt often gave offence to grave Heads of Houses and sedat