Till yesterday, the codes of statutes embodying their domestic law, tho
largely obsolete, remained unchanged. Nowhere else in England, at all
events, unless it be at the sister University, can the eye and mind feed
upon so much antiquity, certainly not upon so much antique beauty, as on
the spot where we stand. That all does not belong to the same remote
antiquity, adds to the interest and to the charm. This great home of
learning, with its many architectures, has been handed from generation
to generation, each generation making its own improvements, impressing
its own tastes, embodying its own tendencies, down to the present hour.
It is like a great family mansion, which owner after owner has enlarged
or improved to meet his own needs or tastes, and which, thus chronicling
successive phases of social and domestic life, is wanting in uniformity
but not in living interest or beauty.

Oxford is a federation of Colleges. It had been strictly so for two
centuries, and every student had been required to be a member of a
college when, in 1856, non-collegiate students, of whom there are now a
good many, were admitted. The University is the federal government. The
Chancellor, its nominal head, is a non-resident grandee, usually a
political leader whom the University delights to honor and whose
protection it desires. Only on great state occasions does he appear in
his gown richly embroidered with gold. The acting chief is the
Vice-Chancellor, one of the heads of Colleges, who marches with the
Bedel carrying the mace before him, and has been sometimes taken by
strangers for the attendant of the Bedel. With him are the two Proctors,
denoted by their velvet sleeves, named by the Colleges in turn, the
guardians of University discipline.

The University Legislature consists of three houses--an elective
Council, made up equally of heads of Colleges, professors, and Masters