somewhere that the undergraduates wear kid gloves and drink less wine
than their jolly brethren of the Cam. He was thoroughly Cambridge in his
attitude towards life, as you may see when he writes of his favourite
eighteenth century in his own fascinating style. How angry he becomes
with the vices and corruption of a dead past! Now no Oxford essayist
would dream of being angry with the past. How annoyed the sentimental
author of _The Four Georges_ would be with Mr. Street's genial treatment
of the same epoch! It would, however, be the annoyance of a father for
his eldest son, whom he sent to Oxford perhaps to show that an old slight
was forgiven and forgotten.

There have been, of course, plenty of men unravaged by the blithe
contagion. Mr. Gladstone intellectually always seemed to me a Cambridge
man in his energy, his enthusiasm, his political outlook. Only in his
High Church proclivities is he suspect. The poet Shelley was an obvious
Cantab. He was, we are told, a man of high moral character. Well,
principles and human weakness are common to all Universities, and others
besides Shelley have deserted their wives: but to desert your wife on
principle seems to me callous, calculating, and Cambridge-like.

A painful but interesting case came under my personal observation, and it
illustrates the other side of the question. A clever young graduate of
my acquaintance, after four years of distinguished scholarship at Oxford,
came up to the metropolis and entered the dangerous lists of literature.
It is not indiscreet if I say that he belonged to what was quite a
brilliant little period--the days of Mr. Eric Parker, Mr. Max Beerbohm,
and Mr. Reginald Turner. So there was nothing surprising in his literary
tastes, though I believe he was unknown to those masters of prose. He
was tall, good-looking, and prepossessing, but his Oxford manner was
unusually pronounced. He never expressed disgust--no Oxford man