e
Professors. No one knew her age, she was so young; and yet she had
been maid of honour to some Queen, as I told her once, to Queen Anne.
Having been maid of honour, she never concealed her own peculiar
feelings about people who had not been presented. When she wanted to
be left alone, she would look out of window, and tell visitors who
came to call, "Very sorry, but I am not at home to-day." Queen's
College also, under Dr. Thomson, the future Archbishop of York, was a
most hospitable house. Mrs. Thomson presided over it with her peculiar
grace and genuine kindness, and many a pleasant evening I spent there
with musical performances. But here, too, the old leaven of Oxford
burst forth sometimes. Of course, we generally performed the music of
Handel and other classical authors; Mendelssohn's compositions were
still considered as mere twaddle by some of the old school. At one of
these evenings, the old organist of New College, with his wooden leg,
after sitting through a rehearsal of Mendelssohn's _Hymn of Praise_,
which I was conducting at the pianoforte, walked up to me, as I
thought, to thank me; but no, he burst out in a torrent of real and
somewhat coarse abuse of me, for venturing to introduce such flimsy
music at Oxford. I did not feel very guilty, and fortunately I
remained silent, whether from actual bewilderment or from a better
cause, I can hardly tell.

[Illustration: _F. Max Mueller Aged 30._]

Long before Commissions came down on Oxford a new life seemed to be
springing up there, and what was formerly the exception became more
and more the rule among the young Fellows and Tutors. They saw what a
splendid opportunity was theirs, having the very flower of England
to educate, having the future of English society to form. They
certainly made the best of it, helped, I believe, by the so-called
Oxford Movement, which, whatever came of it afterwards, was certainly
in the beginning thoroughly genuine and conscientious. The Tutors saw
a good deal of the young men confided to their care, and the result
was that even what was called the "fast set" thought it a fine thing
to take a good class. I could mention a number of young noblemen and
wealthy undergraduates who, in my early years, read for a first class
and took it; and my experience has certainly been that those who took
a first class came out in later life as eminent and useful members of
society. Not that eminence in political, clerical, literary, and
scie