e is for the most part a lonely place. Men
pass through the melancholy iron-gates by which that quadrangle
is entered on three sides--from Broad street, from the Ratcliff,
and from New College-Lane--when necessity leads them that way,
with alert step and silently. No nursemaids or children play
about it. Nobody lives in it. Only when the examinations are
going on you may see a few hooded figures who walk as though
conscious of the powers of academic life and death which they
wield, and a good deal of shuddering undergraduate life flitting
about the place--luckless youths, in white ties and bands, who
are undergoing the _peine forte et dure_ with different degrees
of composure; and their friends who are there to look after them.
You may go in and watch the torture yourself if you are so
minded, for the _viva voce_ schools are open to the public. But
one such experiment will be enough for you, unless you are very
hard-hearted. The sight of the long table, behind which sit
Minos, Rhadamanthus & Co., full-robed, stern of face, soft of
speech, seizing their victim in turn, now letting him run a
little way as a cat does a mouse, then drawing him back, with
claw of wily question, probing him on this side and that, turning
him inside out,--the row of victims opposite, pale or flushed, of
anxious or careless mien, according to temperament, but one and
all on the rack as they bend over the allotted paper, or read
from the well-thumbed book--the scarcely-less-to-be-pitied row
behind of future victims, "sitting for the schools" as it is
called, ruthlessly brought hither by statutes, to watch the
sufferings they must hereafter undergo--should fill the friend of
suffering humanity with thoughts too deep for tears. Through the
long day till four o'clock, or later, the torture lasts. Then the
last victim is dismissed; the men who are "sitting for the
schools" fly all ways to their colleges, silently, in search of
relief to their over-wrought feelings--probably also of beer, the
undergraduate's universal specific. The beadles close those
ruthless doors for a mysterious half-hour on the examiners.
Outside in the quadrangle collect by twos and threes the friends
of the victims, waiting for the reopening of the door, and the
distribution of the "testamurs." The testamurs, lady readers will
be pleased to understand, are certificates under the hands of the
examiners that your sons, brothers, husbands, perhaps, have
successfully undergone t