University. He would like to amalgamate all the small colleges into
groups, so as to have about half-a-dozen colleges in all. He said,
and evidently thought, that little colleges are woefully
circumscribed and petty places; that most of the better men go to
the two or three leading colleges, while the little establishments
are like small backwaters out of the main stream. They elect, he
said, their own men to Fellowships; they resist improvements; much
money is wasted in management, and the whole thing is minute and
feeble. I am afraid it is true in a way; but, on the other hand, I
think that a large college has its defects too. There is no real
college spirit there; it is very nice for two or three sets. But
the different schools which supply a big college form each its own
set there; and if a man goes there from a leading public school, he
falls into his respective set, lives under the traditions and in
the gossip of his old school, and gets to know hardly any one from
other schools. Then the men who come up from smaller places just
form small inferior sets of their own, and really get very little
good out of the place. Big colleges keep up their prestige because
the best men tend to go to them; but I think they do very little
for the ordinary men who have fewer social advantages to start
with.

The only cure, said my friend, for these smaller places is to throw
their Fellowships open, and try to get public-spirited and liberal-
minded Dons. Then, he added, they ought to specialize in some one
branch of University teaching, so that the men who belonged to a
particular department would tend to go there.

Well, to-day was a wet day, so I did what I particularly enjoy--I
went off for a slow stroll, and poked about among some of the