standard. The first rooms assigned me, being small and ill-lighted, as
part of an old Gothic building, were charged at four guineas a year.
These I soon exchanged for others a little better, and for them I paid
six guineas. Finally, by privilege of seniority, I obtained a handsome
set of well-proportioned rooms, in a modern section of the college,
charged at ten guineas a year. This set was composed of three rooms;
namely, an airy bedroom, a study, and a spacious room for receiving
visitors. This range of accommodation is pretty general in Oxford, and,
upon the whole, may be taken perhaps as representing the average amount
of luxury in this respect, and at the average amount of cost. The
furniture and the fittings up of these rooms cost me about twenty-five
guineas; for the Oxford rule is, that if you take the rooms (which is
at your own option), in that case, you _third_ the furniture and
the embellishments--that is, you succeed to the total cost diminished
by one third. You pay, therefore, two guineas out of each three to your
_immediate_ predecessor. But, as he also may have succeeded to the
furniture upon the same terms, whenever there happens to have been a
rapid succession of occupants, the original cost to a remote
predecessor is sometimes brought down, by this process of diminution,
to a mere fraction of the true value; and yet no individual occupant
can complain of any heavy loss. Whilst upon this subject, I may observe
that, in the seventeenth century, in Milton's time, for example (about
1624), and for more than sixty years after that era, the practice of
_chumship_ prevailed: every set of chambers was possessed by two
cooccupants; they had generally the same bed-room, and a common study;
and they were called _chums_. This practice, once all but universal, is
now entirely extinct; and the extinction serves to mark the advance of
the country, not so much in luxury as in refinement.

The next item which I shall notice is that which in college bills is