Statutes, and the disappointed novelist has declared his intention of writing a review of that immortal work on the best models, and doubting 'whether the realistic description of a low class tobacconist's shop is wise in a book intended primarily for the young.'

We insert the following news from the North :At the meeting of the Governors of Owens College, Manchester, held last evening, it was reported that, during the year the College had received bequests or gifts amounting to over £32,000. In addition to £5000, left specifically under the will of Sir Joseph Whitworth, his executors had since presented to the College two sums of £6000 and £10,000 each. The late Mr. Abel Heywood had left £10,000 for the provision of instruction for women and girls. Mr. Bright, the only surviving representative of the Trustees of the Anti-Corn' Law League Fund, has presented to the College the ultimate residue of the fund, amounting to £88, as supplementary to the £2000 presented in 1875, "for the further endowment of the Political Economy Department.' The Court sanctioned the purchase of a Whitworth Laboratory in the Engineering Department.

Oxford is a poor university with an expenditure exceeding its income: will any wealthy person take the hint?

Another Public School Record has been published in the Pall Mall Gazette in which the various schools are ranked according to the number of the scholarships that they have gained. St. Paul's School stands at the head of the list along with Manchester and Eton. This Class List of Public Schools is succeeded by a Class List of the Oxford Colleges, from which we learn that there are only nineteen Colleges in Oxford. We might remind the Pall Mall Gazette that scholars do not appear in the Class Lists immediately on their arrival here, and that there is a gap between Matriculation and the Final Schools. There is therefore little relation between the Scholarships of 1887 and the Class Lists of the same year. Whether the test of such results is the only test by which a School or College can be judged, is not a question to be discussed here. It is certainly a test of activity. Why is it that the conviction that the higher education of the country is being vulgarised by incessant competition, is most fervently expressed by head masters who are not the most successful? If a school intends to teach a subject, it should teach it well, and if it teaches well, the boys will not improbably become scholars here.

It was with saddened hearts that the Oxford Local Board held their last meeting. They learned that duty and matrimony compelled their chairman, the Provost of Queen's, to resign the post he had so ably filled. Dr. Magrath's term of office began and ended with a bridge. At the outset he triumphed over the difficult problem of the widening of Magdalen Bridge; at the end he successfully grappled with the County over the vexed question of rebuilding Osney Bridge. Osney Bridge is to be rebuilt, and the Oxford Local Board will no longer be known as the Oxford branch of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings; but, like the Rector of Exeter, its chairman has not found even a plank to carry him safely across the gulf of matrimony. Spite of this somewhat lurid metaphor, we offer our congratulations to both Heads upon the announcement. Matrimony is a pleasing trait, except when it enrols those we admire as members of the Parkssystem. It adds grace and finish to a Headship.

A letter to the Times of the 11th instant tells us that the Cam "is becoming more and more a sewer and a receptacle for the canine and feline dead of the borough. . . . that the smells from the contributory ditches tell but too conclusively of sewage contamination in the most marked degree." Yet from this malodorous stream came the oarsmen-enthusiasts they must be truly !—who so signally defeated our crews this year at Henley. There have been many projects for turning the outfall of the Cambridge drains away from the Cam, but

it is rumoured that the real reason why no steps are taken is, that were there no sewage there would be no Cam. But when we hear of the unsanitary state of the river in the sister University we must not imagine that our own is all sweetness. The smells between Folly Bridge and Iffley during the hot summer months were powerful enough to keep even enthusiastic oarsmen away from the river, and as for "canine and feline dead" a walk along the towpath at the present time will satisfy anybody that they exist in quantities sufficient to pollute the stream in a marked degree.

Something must be done to get rid of the confusion produced at the beginning of every Term, and in an exaggerated degree in the Michaelmas Term, by the unsatisfactory lecture lists issued by the Boards of Faculties. They look imposing on a notice board, and may impress the freshman with a sense of the vastness and variety of the intellect of the College In some half-dozen cases the hour at which lectures are given tutor, but that is all. They are incomplete and inaccurate. is not stated; in others the date on which a course begins is not to be found. The announcements of professorial lectures in the number of the Gazette published almost simultaneously with the Faculties' lists begin with a caution that the particulars given are partly in correction of the statutable lists, and besides there is an extra leaf containing about twenty ❝additions and corrections," issued by the Secretary to the Board of Faculties, but unsanctioned by the Board. For this we may be thankful; it is satisfactory to find the original information, that a person unknown would lecture on "General Principles," supplanted by the news that the but one's Sherardian Professor will lecture on Extinct Plants; faith in the "corrections" is somewhat shaken by the discovery that a course of lectures held on Tuesdays and Fridays is to begin on Monday, October 17th. One College has already found it necessary to circulate a corrected list of its own open lectures, and if any one, after reading the official lists and looking at the private circulars posted up in College lodges can tell us whether anybody is to lecture this term on Aristotelian Logic, and if so, where, he will have accomplished a feat which has proved too much for the powers of the Board of the Faculty for Literae Humaniores.

Unfortunately the responsibility for this confusion cannot be brought home to any University official or board. It is true that a little more editorial care on the part of the Secretary to the Boards would have prevented many of the mistakes, but the real difficulty lies in the Statute prepared by the University Commission, which makes it necessary that the titles of all lectures for the official list should be sent in some time in the previous Term. It is ridiculous to expect a College to send in in June a complete list of lectures for the October Term, and to allow no addition to be made to the list. No doubt the purpose of the enactment was to make it possible for the Boards to organise and co-ordinate the different College lectures for the general benefit of the University, but this is not done. It is almost as hard for a man to find a lecture on an out-of-the-way subject now, as it was in the days of College Combinations; we search the lists of Honour Moderation Lectures in vain for lectures on any but the first three books of Thucydides. To all appearance the Board does no more for College lectures than could be done in a few hours in the week before the beginning of each Term by an intelligent clerk.

We are glad to see that Professor Ramsay's place has been taken by one whose reputation is so extended as that of Mr. Percy Gardner. Since the publication of his splendid work, Types of Greek Coins, no Englishman can be said to have made so distinct a mark in the region of Greek numismatics; and though the new Professor's great passion is for coins, we

believe that he is a ripe and accomplished archaeologist in other departments as well. He has done this University the honour of deserting both the British Museum and a Cambridge professorship for the sake of carrying out the work begun by Professor Ramsay, and the ardour which was bestowed upon the great catalogue of the nation's con collection is now to be turned to account in a large and airy room, formerly that of John Wesley, situated between the two small quadrangles of Lincoln College. We understand that the devotees of the great preacher still occasionally visit these rooms, but we do not doubt that the new Professor will not take it unkindly if a pilgrim should now and then break in upon his mysteries. We may take this opportunity of stating that the proper style of the professorship is the Lincoln and Merton Professorship of Archaeology and Art, Merton having generously come forward to double the original endowment.

The University of Cambridge has extended the privileges of Affiliated Colleges to the system of University Extension Lectures. Students who have attended a certain number of courses of Extension Lectures are in future to be excused a year's residence at the University. This is a considerable concession to the non-residential system. While a man attended his two years' course of lectures at a local College, it might be hoped that he would have some sort of Collegiate life in the floating society of an Extension centre this will be less possible. The change implies a serious relaxation of the old requirement of residence for a Degree, but it will be justified if it attracts to the University a large number of keen students, and brings its studies into closer connection with the great towns. We should gladly welcome any adaptation of the scheme which would bring the teachers of elementary schools to the Universities for two years of their

course.

Meantime the local Colleges are threatening in several cases to become little more than technical schools, excellent in their advancement of the arts of dyeing and weaving and engineering, but useless as centres of liberal education. In Bristol and Sheffield and Nottingham we are told that the humaner side of the College teaching is in danger of failing altogether for want of proper support. Valuable as the work of technical schools is to the country, it will be a great pity if the wider view of education is crushed out from these provincial Colleges. It is to be hoped that the Government will seriously reconsider the claims of these institutions to a national grant. The expense would not be great, and we feel sure that the result would be to stimulate local effort, and give the Colleges a better standing and a higher influence in their own towns and in the country at large.

Controversy has been busily carried on in learned journals lately by Professors and Deputy Professors and others on the presence of the birch and beech in "the cradle of the Aryan race." We should like to draw our own humble moral in the interests of Professor Sayce and the University at large. Let the Curators of the Parks see to it that their labels are repainted and replaced where there is need, and we shall no longer hear of botanical confusions in high places. At present the eager enquirer is too often baulked in his pursuit of knowledge. If the boon were granted, we could gratefully leave the habitat of the Aryans to Professor Penka.

The new house of the Principal of Brasenose stands on what must be one of the oldest academical sites. Now that Mr. Rashdall has shown that the University was in all probability quite independent from the very first of the early monastic schools, the traditions of the earliest lectures which linger round the porch of St. Mary's and the south

end of School Street, which lay under the shadow of the same church, are more likely to obtain credence. The antiquities actually found have been few and almost valueless. Still there are traces that St. Mary's churchyard extended as far west as the old house of the Principal; and a large oldfashioned stone fireplace was found below the level of the ground on Bassett's site, with a staircase leading down to it on the north side, while on the south was a doorway leading apparently under the High, possibly to some old cellar. And now that Tester's has come down all the world can see a large arch of stone facing east and west which would suit a fifteenth century hall.

When Standen's was demolished and its foundations removed, early in September last, it was found that the south wall of St. Mary's Entry was in a dangerous state. In fact the whole of its foundations were rubble and irregular stones, roughly plastered together with mud, and as soon as September's storms beat upon them, the wall began to sink. The whole wall in consequence has been renewed. The builders of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries seem to have depended on the general coherence of houses rather than the skilful construction of their walls, at least in domestic architecture: it is even said that Mr. T. G. Jackson the architect has declared that he did not find a party-wall deserving the name between All Saints' and St. Mary's! It is curious to think that in five years Undergraduates will have no more remembrance that Brasenose used not to face the High, than other people have that Queen's used to be in the same condition.

Early in each year we hope to be able to give a bibliographical list of the books and pamphlets issued in the preceding year which bear on the history of Oxford or are otherwise of local interest. It will probably also include the chief magazine articles on the same subject, which have become increasingly frequent in these days of reminiscences. Our readers will possibly be surprised to find how numerous are these publications, large and small. completeness we shall endeavour during this Term to give the corresponding lists for each year since the commencement of the Magazine.

For the sake of

Three new volumes of the Oxford Historical Society's publications are nearly ready for issue. Two of them are a continuation of the Register of the University from 1571 to 1622, still wanting a third part to complete that period. The first volume contains an introduction giving a full description of the complicated system of lectures, disputations and dispensations, which were involved in the ordinary Oxford course and preceded a degree. Lists of incorporations, of privileged persons, and of distinguished visitors to Oxford follow, with other special lists. In the second volume are the matriculations, with tables showing the number and provenance of the Undergraduates, while the third will contain the degrees and a general index. The editor is the Rev. Andrew Clark, of Lincoln College. The last-mentioned volume is not yet in type, but will be issued in 1888. The third book actually ready is a collection of letters from two members of Queen's College in the latter half of the last century, giving a clear and interesting account of College life, by which the exaggerated words of Gibbon may well be put to the test. These will be edited by Mrs. A. J. Evans.

The new Reader in Geography, Mr. Mackinder, will deliver his first course of lectures this Term. The majority of his audience will no doubt be drawn from those who are reading for the Honour School of Modern History, but the discursive votary of Science might also do well to cast his eye in this direction. Moreover, those who wish to specialise in the subject should know, if they do not already, that there

are several places of emolument open to the trained geographer. The University Extension sadly wants another lecturer, the Geographical Society is calling for a more educated staff of observers, and it is even said that the sister University feels the need of an exponent of the science. However, the word "specialise" is an unfortunate term to use in connection with Mr. Mackinder's schemes. Geography is no longer to confine itself to maps and charts, but to form the cement that will bind together physiography, history, and commerce. No one can deny that our wars, our agriculture, our trade, our pleasures and pains take place upon the surface of the earth; the earth underlies us all; it forms, therefore, the natural basis for a comprehensive scheme of study. Some critics might complain that this view of geography is too universal and unscientific; "c'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la géographie." This question may safely be left to those who propose to attend Mr. Mackinder's lectures this Term; we may, however, admit that any attempt to counteract over-specialisation at the present time cannot be unwelcome.

Considerable interest is excited by the prospect of the new elections to the Council on Saturday. It was said that the Dean of Christ Church, who for long has been one of the leaders of the Liberal party in Oxford, had declined to stand again; but we are glad to hear rumours of an arrangement which will secure the services both of the Dean and the Master of Balliol for another term of years to the University. There seems to be a general feeling that some new and perhaps younger blood is needed. Meanwhile we are all realising that elections to Council ought not to, and probably will not, turn on the old party lines much longer.

We come back to learn one very bad piece of news. The Oxford Town Council have found themselves unable to assist in its need the Oxford High School for Boys. There was a long and full.debate in the Council. The Mayor and Deputy-Mayor most gallantly stood up for the School grant. Alderman Underhill and Mr. Pulling opposed it, and we regret to say, in the interests of Oxford and of education, were successful. The successes the school has won under Mr. Pollard's régime are wonderful, the advantage it has been to the city incalculable. But Mr. Pollard must now inevitably retire, and the city relapse into its old state. We deeply sympathise with Mr. Pollard, and only trust that his services and merits will not be forgotten elsewhere, if they have not availed him here. We venture to think the opponents of the grant will, if they remain in Oxford, come to repent their action. Mr. Pulling meanwhile has wisely

left.

Lovers of chamber-music, and they are numerous in Oxford, will be glad to hear that the Heckmann Quartett will visit Oxford again this Term. They are to play at the Invitation Concert of the Musical Union, in Christ Church Hall, on December 6, in the afternoon. The largely increased number of members belonging to the Union has of late made increased accommodation imperative, and during the Long Vacation the Committee have carried out extensive building operations, which have resulted in providing the members with one of the largest and most handsome club-rooms in Oxford. One of the most distinctive features in the changes made is the introduction of the "Wenham" lights, which are almost a novelty in Oxford.

When the theatre opens with Mr. Benson's Company on Monday next, October 24, the audience will discover many additions and alterations in the building. Two new exits have been added-one from the stage, another from the stalls |

and dress circle on the prompt side, while the arrangement of the seats in the gallery has been made much more convenient for its habitués. The theatre has also been painted and decorated from top to bottom, and in the last place a new act-drop, which has been painted by the scenic artist of the theatre, will take the place of the sickly yellows and blues of the Iffley Mill picture. We believe that the magistrates have just publicly expressed their satisfaction with the arrangements, and we shall next week announce the details.

Friends of Professor Moseley will be sorry to hear that he has been compelled by severe illness to relinquish his duties for this Term and take a complete rest. Perhaps some of those who make it their business to imagine and attack the idleness of Professors in Oxford will be surprised to hear that Professor Moseley's illness is due to overwork, caused as much by his unremitting attention to the students and collections under his care as by the conscientious performance of his duties as a member of the committees of several learned Societies in London. Mr. Hatchett Jackson has consented to take charge of the Anatomical Department in the Professor's absence, and both the staff and students are to be congratulated on his being able to fill the vacancy temporarily created. But since the invaluable series of lectures given by Professor Moseley is interrupted and will not be continued this Term, his absence will be doubly deplored by his pupils. It is hoped that he will be able to resume his duties in January next.

The Bishop of Bedford (Dr. Walsham How) has promised to visit Oxford this term, in order to bring the state of East London under the notice of the University, and to meet any men who may be willing to select that district as the scene of their clerical labours... The Committee of the Oxford House in Bethnal Green have therefore decided to organise a public meeting in the Hall of Keble College on Thursday evening, Nov. 17, at which the Bishop of Bedford will be present. The Warden of Keble College will preside, and addresses will also be delivered by the Provost of Worcester, and the new Head of the Oxford House (Mr. Hensley Henson of All Souls). It is earnestly hoped that this meeting will be attended by large numbers of men, who will thus testify their interest in the great problems of the East End, and their desire to support the Bishop of Bedford in his heroic exertions.

The Toynbee Hall meeting, which was to have taken place last Term, is fixed for the 20th November. The Bishop of Ripon, the Warden, and possibly Mr. Walter Besant will be the chief speakers. Full particulars will be announced shortly. The annual report will soon be out, and Oxford friends will be glad to hear that the year's experience has been very satisfactory, the house full, and work progressing. It is requested that all communications for the present be addressed to the Hon. Secretary for Toynbee Hall, C. C. C.

A correspondent writes:

Walking through the Parks the other day we observed certain sheep making a square meal off the evergreens in the small enclosures, whose roomy railings by a strange economy are allowed to do duty for hurdles, to the detriment of the sheep's digestion, our food supply, and the beauty of the undergrowth. Where is the Park-keeper?"

With this number we publish a portrait of the present Vice-Chancellor, who was elected President of St. John's College in 1871.