teachers devoted to their profession, as well as of the revival of the
Professorships, which were always tenable by married men. Fifty years
ago the wives of Heads of Houses, who generally married late in life if
they married at all, constituted, with one or two officers of the
University, the whole female society of Oxford. The change was
inevitable, if education was to be made a profession, instead of being,
as it had been in the hands of celibate Fellows of Colleges, merely the
transitory occupation of a man whose final destination was the parish.
Those who remember the old Common Room life, which is now departing, can
not help looking back with a wistful eye to its bachelor ease, its
pleasant companionship, its interesting talk and free interchange of
thought, its potations neither "deep" nor "dull."

Nor were its symposia without important fruits when such men as Newman
and Ward, on one side, encountered such men as Whateley, Arnold, and
Tait, on the other side in Common Room talk over great questions of the
day. But the life became dreary when a man had passed forty, and it is
well exchanged for the community that fills those villas, and which,
with its culture, its moderate and tolerably equal incomes, permitting
hospitality but forbidding luxury, and its unity of interests with its
diversity of acquirements and accomplishments, seems to present the
ideal conditions of a pleasant social life. The only question is, how
the College system will be maintained when the Fellows are no longer
resident within the walls of the College to temper and control the
younger members, for a barrack of undergraduates is not a good thing.
The personal bond and intercourse between Tutor and pupil under the
College system was valuable as well as pleasant; it can not be resigned
without regret. But its loss will be compensated by far
superior teaching.