would rise in his place and ask the Home Secretary if he knew anything of certain occurrences at Christ Church. The right honourable gentleman little thought that one of his nearest relatives was at the bottom of all the mischief to which he referred. There has always been at Christ Church a fast, unscrupulous, extravagant set, who have never taken the least serious interest in the studies of the place, and are content to scrape through the mere pass examination, or to reside as long as they can without encountering any examination at all. I am a Christ Church man myself, and, while desiring to meet the facts fully and fairly, I still think there is a great deal of undue exaggeration respecting them, and unjust inference. The rat-catcher' set at Christ Church, to use a phrase current in my day, were lightly esteemed, and did not number largely, and formed a very moderate percentage on the numbers of the largest college in Oxford. Moreover, when we inquire into most of the Christ Church rows, there is less of crime in them than sheer nonsense and frivolity.

the

It was so with this last row. As the facts were told, they looked exceedingly black in the first instance. The case looked one of felony-a felony which the authorities might not be able to compound. Afterwards the case assumed a much milder complexion. It was a curious thought which suggested to the wild undergraduate mind thought of the raid on the library. The solitude of that splendid library is very rarely invaded by the undergraduate. You may get the use of a key for a half-crown fee to the librarian, and then study books, or statues, or paintings to any extent in undisturbed seclusion. I have heard of the present Dean, when a young man, doing much of his celebrated 'Lexicon ' here before breakfast of a morning; but these legends of superhuman industry, vaguely reported and dimly believed, have hardly the faintest counterpart in the present day. I remember a man being asked by Dean Liddell at collections, what Sophocles he knew.

'I know all Sophocles,' was the aspiring reply. Ah,' said Dr. Liddell, quietly, 'I'wish I did.' A neat reply, which considerably shut up the young man. But the library is very little known to men of the House, unless when showing the Guise collection of pictures to their visitors. Now, if these young men had been bent only on the most mischievous kind of frolic they could devise, in a few minutes they might have done thousands of pounds of mischief. There are some pictures in that collection which were almost priceless-as the world recognized at the Manchester Art Exhibition-and they could, without much difficulty, be cut to pieces and destroyed. Then we have the Chantrey busts, with their vacant pedestal. Chantrey refused to do the bust of George IV. until the King had paid him for his bust of George III. Now it was pure whim which induced young men, apparently hard-up for a way of exhibiting their animal spirits, to take Mr. Munro's bust of Dean Gaisford and some others out of the abode and deposit them in quad. To give them a moustache, fling something over the shoulders, stick a cigar in the mouth, was probably the extent of the mischief meditated. It was intensely silly and boyish; but I do not think there is anything more to be said. It was not so bad as climbing over into a private garden of the House, and demolishing everything, right and left, that the garden had contained. If the frolic had stopped at this point, we should have heard nothing more about it. But the demon of discord hovering over Christ Church-I believe that is a classical way of expressing oneself-sent another mischievous party roaming about Christ Church to view these sacred effigies. To roam about the House at midnight, and to do what little harm that can be done in the rooms of friends who have imprudently neglected to sport oaks-upsetting everything in the rooms, which is called haymakingis a nocturnal employment congenial to the undergraduate mind. Pleasing, also, is it to have a great midnight bonfire, and let the ruddy

blaze overtop Canterbury Quad into Oriel Street. I remember, in my time, a raid being made into the lecture-room, and some forms, chairs, and indifferent pictures being carried away, together with wheelbarrows and ladders belonging to some workmen, to form a glorious fire in Peckwater Quad. Of course the censors or tutors would hurry to the spot, if they had heard what had happened; but the real offenders would have scurried off, and generally they could only seize and severely reprimand some timid freshman who had hurried to the spot through some alarm of fire. In the case I have mentioned, the matter was condoned through the chief offender sending a cheque for about a hundred pounds, which covered all damages. The same course might have been adopted in the present instance-and any amount of money would have been forthcoming to avoid expulsion-if the true proportions of the occurrence had been known at the time. The first band of revellers had had their skylarking and retired from the field. Enter to them a second band, who are seized with the idea of having a blaze and blackening those venerable countenances. The silly boys were probably dismayed when they found the marble calcined into lime, and discovered that they had been vulgar Goths and Vandals in destroying a work of art. If the transaction had been designed and complete from beginning to end, the offence would have deserved something more than any measure of collegiate punishment; but the responsibility thus divided, makes the offence lighter than many that have been condoned. Great must have been the consternation of the Christ Church dons, when they found the effigies of the greatest of all dons, Dean Gaisford-albeit a German commentator did choose to call him Guisfordius escior quis-thus maltreated. It would not fail to suggest to their minds the mutilation of the Hermæ, previous to the Sicilian expedition, and, in its way, excited as much terror and disgust as that famous and mysterious event.

Expulsion is a punishment of a very varying effect. To men intended for a public or professional career it is simply ruin; to other men it is little more than a mere occurrence of a moment. At some institutions it has been a method tried on a large scale. Dr. Arnold made Rugby a great school by expelling boys, or forcing them to leave, or refusing to admit them when they would do the school discredit; a system that has been extensively imitated by succeeding masters of public schools. You may weed a school or college very completely this way, but it perhaps involves some hardship to parents, and after all bad boys must go to school or college as well as good. There are always a slight sprinkling of men at Christ Church who might be told to take their names off the books very advantageously to the interests of the university. The records of hall, chapel, and lecture-room, and the entries in the porter's book indicate the suspicious or the suspectes d'être suspectes. A man whose general character is high may now and then do some extraordinary breach of discipline, without being called to account for it, whereas a man of indifferent repute, for a minor breach of discipline, would be sure to receive the censor's compliments, and the censor would be glad to speak to him the first thing after chapel. So true it is that one man may take a horse while another may be hanged for looking over a hedge. Some extraordinary freaks have been done at Christ Church by very quiet men in some sudden ebullition, and their character has stood so well with the authorities that they have never been suspected. I am not at all surprised that in this last outbreak some suspected men have been discovered to be innocent, and some unsuspected men have been shown to be culprits.

But I cannot help thinking, with a well-informed man who wrote a very sensible leader on the subject in the Times,' that if these young men have sinned against the House, there are also respects in which Christ Church sins against its undergraduates. Young men at Ox

ford have a social and moral life on which the college system fails even to infringe. Now and then young men are invited by dons to a wine or an evening party, but they merely show themselves as on parade and pass by unnoted. Dean Liddell is one of our greatest scholars, and one of the most just and upright of men, but it can hardly be said that he has obtained that popularity which is almost the duty of the ruler of a great society. Cannot the Dean, Canons, and Tutors of Christ Church do something more to win the confidence, to raise the moral tone, to increase the happiness and selfrespect of that large and important section of English youth intrusted to their care, nearly all of whom are possible magistrates and legislators, and probably much also that is higher? Christ Church has many great traditions to uphold, but the governing body does not seem to see the way very clearly how to uphold or extend them. Perhaps the imparting some element of home life into collegiate life, the tutors seeking direct personal influence over the men, as sometimes has been done at Balliol and elsewhere, the seeking of personal friendship, which young men are mostly so generously ready to confer, might do something towards weaning undergraduates from practical jokes, and of awakening them into some wide and true ideas of the duties and destinies of life.

FLOWER SHOWS AND FANCY FAIRS.

The revolving summer as it comes round restores to us once more the pleasing phenomena of the flower show and the fancy fair. They form certainly the most ingenious instrumentation ever devised by the ladies with the single object of the extraction of coin from that unworthy gender which has usurped the power of the purse. The twin institutions have covered the country with such a perfect network that it is almost hopeless to expect that any man will be able to escape the toils. We have no doubt that flower shows were originally

devised by fair ladies, who certainly furnish the most delicate and delicious blooms of all to such institutions. They also effect an incalculable amount of good, for there is hardly a village that does not hold its little horticultural fête, and the good effect is spread over many thousand smiling gardens throughout the country. But the flower shows are no longer presided over by the graces-they are generally managed by rough-handed gardeners and a hirsute committee of the local gentry. The institution of the bazaar or the fancy fair is exclusively the ladies' domain, and we regret to say that they have an unbusinesslike way of doing business. A worthy bishop the other day, when taking the chair at an institution of this sort, made some very ungracious and unflattering remarks on them, and I really think that he was very hard upon them, for sometimes they don't do so very much wrong, and if they do, they do wrong with the best intentions.

I beg to say that I know fancy fairs to which the bishop's criticisms will not apply in the least degree. I am bound to admit, however, that these exceptions chiefly apply to provincial districts, and the rules of commercial virtue have hardly penetrated to the fancy fairs of Belgravian demoiselles. Generally speaking, the taste for the fancy fair survives, but the original spirit which animated it is lost. Originally the ladies worked hard at a hundred elegant and useful things, or made great sacrifices of little personal objects very dear to them, sustained by the enthusiasm of a great cause. But now they do not give away much of their own, and they find it easier to order in a lot of things from the shops, and they demand exorbitant prices for what they sell. Still the old style of thing often survives in its best form. As you go about the Little Pedlingtons of the world you will find the young ladies of such obscure localities are for weeks and months busily employing their fair fingers in industrious work that has for its object the maintenance of the parish schools, the warming of the church, or the

building of a parsonage for the popular parson. It is also to be noticed that the age of elegant trifling has gone by, and young ladies when sensibly brought up have an eye to the useful, and, in the case of a bazaar, to the market state of supply and demand for such wares as they fabricate. They charge as much as they think they are likely to get for mere admission, and I do not see how the most rigid bishop can object to what is simply a matter of free choice. Their prices are very much the same as the shops-much to the indignation of the shopkeepers, with whom the bazaars are often no favourites. If the clergyman is rigid he will not even allow a raffle, and his wife will not approve of a flirtation. And yet the fancy fair will flourish even under such ungenial conditions. I have seen indeed some innovations made with the happiest results. The stall system was discouraged as leading to rivalry, and the ladies officiated at different times behind the imitation counter as amateur shopwomen. During the evening they perform pieces of music, and so produce a kind of drawing-room where all classes might pleasantly associate together, and we think the country thus gives hints which may be advantageously followed in town.

The London bazaar is certainly iniquitous enough. Flirting is almost the end and aim of the institution, but its best effects are sometimes painfully counteracted by extreme voracity in obtaining high prices. There are a number of pretty little legends about fancy fairs, of men who have given sovereigns for flowers and a ten-pound note for a lock of hair. It almost seems as if young ladies were resolutely bent on sounding the lowest depths of an adorer's purse, as if the traditional worldly mamma was resolved to draw from trifles some light on the subject of settlements. The most enamoured adorer might, however, be a little cooled by reflecting that he was thus prodigally drained. The plea 'Remember it's for a charity' is supposed to cover every kind of immoderate pressure and entreaty. Perhaps the worst thing in this line

used to be the theatrical fancy fair at the Crystal Palace, but I am told that this is now placed upon a better footing. Mr. Trollope, in his 'Miss Mackenzie,' makes his Guardsmen use very bad language because young ladies charged them five shillings each for looking through a peephole and five shillings for writing their names on a slip of paper. Many worse things, however, might be told of the bazaars. Unless they can be altered into something better, it is an open question whether they should not be abolished altogether. The Peripatetic hereby announces his intention of taking notice of such institutions during the summer and autumn, with a view of promulgating a timely scheme of reform respecting their character and uses.

STRAY NOTES ON BOOKS.

Earl Stanhope, in his 'Reign of Queen Anne," has given us a work which will be of decided service to students of history, but which provokes an odious comparison, of which the critics have made a good deal. He designs his work as a link between his own history from the Peace of Utrecht and Lord Macaulay's fragmentary fifth volume. It is not given to every one to draw the bow of Achilles, and it is impossible to read this book without feeling how painfully destitute of eloquence, imagination, and historical genius Earl Stanhope is. It might have been better called a Life of Marlborough, and the real book to compare with it is Sir Archibald Alison's 'Life of Marlborough.' Lord Stanhope need not shrink from a comparison with Alison as an historian. In some points of view he need not shrink from a comparison with Macaulay. He is a much more honest writer. We are always quite free from that feeling of suspicion which continually haunts Macaulay's pages. We find here a much calmer, a much juster estimate of William III. and Marlborough. He often refers to Macaulay, and gives the following

*History of England: comprising the Reign of Queen Anne until the Peace of Utrecht, 1701-1713.' By Earl Stanhope. Murray.

little anecdote: He pointed out to me that the ancient device of the Templars had been two knights upon one horse, to indicate the original poverty of their order; and he observed that the same device might be as aptly applied to the modern members of the Temple-two barristers at least to one cause.' Lord Stanhope has a very interesting argument, to show that in the reign of Queen Anne people were much more happy and contented than they are in the reign of Queen Victoria. It is in the last chapter, entitled 'The Age of Anne,' that we especially feel Lord Stanhope's inferiority to Lord Macaulay. Macaulay was always happiest when he got away from his politics to the domain of pure literature. In the whole range of literature there is no period which he knew so thoroughly and with which he sympathised so thoroughly as the age of Anne. As we read these meagre pages we cannot but recal how Macaulay would have revelled in the subject, and would have crowded his pages with exhaustless and brilliant illustrations of the subject. We must, however, say that to those who really study history this cannot fail to be a very serviceable volume. It is perhaps, however, the least service of the many valuable services which Lord Stanhope has rendered to the country. To him we owe many valuable historical books, and the National Portrait Gallery-public services of no ordinary kind.

Mr. Kingsley, in his 'Madam How and Lady Why," has given us one of his best books, not destined perhaps to be as popular as his novels, but certainly as valuable as anything which he has done in science, and much more valuable than anything he has done in history. He calls it a book for children, but children of very large growth indeed, who are often deplorably ignorant of scientific truth, may be put by this work in the right groove for an infinite expansion of their ideas. Mr. Kingsley is no less noted for his

*Madam How and Lady Why; or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children.' By Rev. Charles Kingsley, M.A. Bell and Daldy.

science than for his protests against the dogmatism and materialism of scientific men. There are some bright, pungent sentences which we especially commend to the attention of some of the savants. Then you are fast asleep, and perhaps that is the best thing for you; for sleep will (so I am informed, though I never saw it happen, nor any one else) put fresh grey matter into your brain; or save the wear and tear of the old grey matter, or something else, when they have settled what it is to do: and if so, you will wake up with a fresh fiddlestring to your little fiddle of a brain, on which you are playing new tunes all day long. So much the better; but when I believe your brain is you, pretty boy, then I shall believe also that the fiddler is his fiddle.' Similarly Mr. Kingsley quotes Herder. The organ is in no case the power that works it;' 'which is as much as to say,' proceeds Mr. Kingsley, 'that the engine is not the engine-driver, nor the spade the gardener.'

A wonderful little book for the student is Mr. Bond's 'Handy-Book of Dates.' Mr. Bond is well and very favourably known to all who frequent the library of the Rolls, and is the Assistant Keeper of the Public Records. He, if any man, knows the importance of verifying dates, and the ingenuity of his method and the wide range of his readings will be evident to every student. The work indeed appeals to an esoteric circle both of readers and of critics, and these will not be slow to estimate the substantial help afforded to them. Mr. Bond truly points out that the mere knowledge of the fact that an event occurred is of little worth per se, unless the true place in the history of the world of the event in question is also known. This is one of those valuable books which it is the interest of all true scholars to praise and make known.

A work on the 'Discovery of the

*Handy-Book of Rules and Tables for Verifying Dates with the Christian Era.' By John J. Bond, Assistant Keeper of the Public Records. Bell and Daldy.