So much for the aristocracy of our English universities: their glory
is, and the happiest application of their vast influence, that they
have the power to be republican, as respects their internal condition.
Literature, by substituting a different standard of rank, tends to
republican equality; and, as one instance of this, properly belonging
to the chapter of _servants_, which originally led to this
discussion, it ought to be known that the class of "servitors," once a
large body in Oxford, have gradually become practically extinct under
the growing liberality of the age. They carried in their academic dress
a mark of their inferiority; they waited at dinner on those of higher
rank, and performed other menial services, humiliating to themselves,
and latterly felt as no less humiliating to the general name and
interests of learning. The better taste, or rather the relaxing
pressure of aristocratic prejudice, arising from the vast diffusion of
trade and the higher branches of mechanic art, have gradually caused
these functions of the order (even where the law would not permit the
extinction of the order) to become obsolete. In my time, I was
acquainted with two servitors: but one of them was rapidly pushed
forward into a higher station; and the other complained of no
degradation, beyond the grievous one of exposing himself to the notice
of young women in the streets, with an untasselled cap; but this he
contrived to evade, by generally going abroad without his academic
dress. The _servitors_ of Oxford are the _sizars_ of Cambridge; and I
believe the same changes [Footnote: These changes have been
accomplished, according to my imperfect knowledge of the case, in
two ways: first, by dispensing with the services whenever that could be
done; and, secondly, by a wise discontinuance of the order itself in
those colleges which were left to their own choice in this matter.]
have taken place in both.