it is in England:--

"'Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.'

"When I tried to talk they broke into my thought with stupid gibes and
jokes. Their highest idea of humour was an obscene story. No, no,
Tyrrell and Mahaffy represent to me whatever was good in Trinity."

In 1874 Oscar Wilde won the gold medal for Greek. The subject of the
year was "The Fragments of the Greek Comic Poets, as edited by
Meineke." In this year, too, he won a classical scholarship--a
demyship of the annual value of £95, which was tenable for five years,
which enabled him to go to Oxford without throwing an undue strain on
his father's means.

He noticed with delight that his success was announced in the _Oxford
University Gazette_ of July 11th, 1874. He entered Magdalen College,
Oxford, on October 17th, a day after his twentieth birthday.

Just as he had been more successful at Trinity than at school, so he
was destined to be far more successful and win a far greater
reputation at Oxford than in Dublin.

He had the advantage of going to Oxford a little later than most men,
at twenty instead of eighteen, and thus was enabled to win high
honours with comparative ease, while leading a life of cultured
enjoyment.

He was placed in the first class in "Moderations" in 1876 and had even
then managed to make himself talked about in the life of the place.