OXFORD FROM WITHOUT


Some time ago I ventured to defend that race of hunted and persecuted
outlaws, the Bishops; but until this week I had no idea of how much
persecuted they were. For instance, the Bishop of Birmingham made some
extremely sensible remarks in the House of Lords, to the effect that
Oxford and Cambridge were (as everybody knows they are) far too much
merely plutocratic playgrounds. One would have thought that an Anglican
Bishop might be allowed to know something about the English University
system, and even to have, if anything, some bias in its favour. But (as
I pointed out) the rollicking Radicalism of Bishops has to be
restrained. The man who writes the notes in the weekly paper called the
_Outlook_ feels that it is his business to restrain it. The passage has
such simple sublimity that I must quote it--

"Dr. Gore talked unworthily of his reputation when he spoke of the
older Universities as playgrounds for the rich and idle. In the first
place, the rich men there are not idle. Some of the rich men are, and so
are some of the poor men. On the whole, the sons of noble and wealthy
families keep up the best traditions of academic life."

So far this seems all very nice. It is a part of the universal principle
on which Englishmen have acted in recent years. As you will not try to
make the best people the most powerful people, persuade yourselves that
the most powerful people are the best people. Mad Frenchmen and Irishmen