NOTES AND NEWS. WE publish a letter from Mr. Fletcher calling attention to the effect of the present popularity of Football on the condition of Rowing in the University. No doubt the standard of Oxford rowing is at the present time lower than it has been for many years past, and there is at least this much to be said for Mr. Fletcher's contention, that men who in former days would have taken up rowing, and who from their physique would have had every prospect of becoming good college oars, and even of representing the University at Putney, now give their attention to football. Rowing and cricket are traditionally the leading sports at the Universities, and the leading contests are at Putney and Lords. It would be a pity if either were to suffer through the counter attractions of a game whose popularity in the University is recent, and perhaps transient. Saturday's match against the London Scottish ended in a brilliant but unexpected triumph. They had brought down AT THE THEATRE. Mr. Edward Compton's Comedy Company. ,, a team rather stronger than that with which they beat Blackheath, and it seemed hardly possible that the 'Varsity could do more than escape defeat. Our forwards, however, rose, to the occasion, and played far better than they have done before this season. From first to last they had the best of it, pushing their opponents before them, and then breaking up the scrimmage with a rush. Castens, Boswell, and Glubb, were the most prominent on our side, and it was their splendid play that prevented the famous Scottish_threequarters from having a chance of saving the game. We may claim, in fact, to have made all the points scored in the. afternoon, as we certainly gave our opponents their two tries. Anything more ludicrously irritating than Sayer's present of the second try to an ambitious Scot, cannot be conceived. But the victory ought to be a great encouragement to the team, and nerve them for the forthcoming encounters with Blackheath and Richmond. The crowd of spectators were roused to the height of noisy enthusiasm, and the ropes and posts on one side of the ground showed a sympathetic weakness. of the Plan of Campaign to room-rents, Persians entering breathless from Balliol to confess their god and bask in his presence, while scouts came flying wild with haste and fear, to fight Vulcan with milk-jugs. Enter President, points out insufficiency of exits and reverence due to his person, but is met with cries of "Stand fast, and remember Mitchelstown." President reads Riot Act and orders military, consisting of Porter and Messenger, to clear the quad. Confused shouts of "Fair Battells!" "No cumulative Mods fees!" "Low standards and the Plan for ever!" Persian contingent vociferating for Oriental Mods, with a reformed climate, and Regius Professor of the connection between Ancient and Modern History insisting that the Eastern Question is at the root of the conflagration. Telegrams of sympathy with the objects of the meeting are read from Mr. Wilfrid Blunt and from Hawarden, the latter on a postcard, but very exhaustive in its treatment of the subject, not being quite finished when unquenchable rain comes down, and a glorious gathering comes to an end, patriots and Persians running to earth, and proctors opening on a hot scent after a weary Pembroke man who is travelling home from an early tea party at Keble. The official report of the damage is said to be:-" President's patience burnt out, and back hair off, and slight damage by fire and milk." But for the truth of this, or of any of the above details, we must wholly decline to be responsible. The match against Cooper's Hill, on Saturday, excited considerable interest, as our opponents had the reputation of being a good all-round team. They were unlucky in losing the services of Holms, probably the best man on the ground, but they continued a plucky struggle to the end. The most depressing aspect of the match was the comparative failure of our forwards. They contain some excellent players, especially Castens, who ought to have a chance of an international cap, but they are not at all together. Last year they were the bulwark of the team, but so far they have shown nothing of their old form. Behind we are stronger than last year, and if Christopherson goes on playing as he is doing now, we shall have little to complain of in this department. Sayer runs strongly and punts well, while Fleming passed with conspicuous judgment. Rashleigh is not an immaculate back, but he keeps his head well and usually kicks with precision. Next Saturday we meet the powerful London Scottish team, who have just beaten Blackheath, and we shall be better able to estimate our chance of success in the 'Varsity match. Cambridge seem playing in a most uncertain manner. After "a day out" with the Middlesex Wanderers they succumbed to the Old Leysians; next they easily defeated a powerful Liverpool team, only to be worsted again on Saturday by the Harlequins. Cooper's Hill defeated the Harlequins by three goals and a try, and we beat Cooper's Hill by a goal and two tries. From such a mass of bewildering inconsistencies no one but an ancient prophet could make a plausible conjecture as to the future. The following is taken from the Standard newspaper :Our new Universities, therefore, must necessarily be of a character tendency is showing itself to import into their systems many of the characteristic features of the Scottish and Continental Universities. Un more adapted to modern needs, and even at Oxford and Cambridge the attached students are one of them; the greater importance now assigned to professorial as distinct from tutorial teaching is another. Doubts may exist as to whether these changes are altogether for the better. But they were probably inevitable, being due, as they were, to a strong current of public opinion, which may work even still greater changes in the future than it has effected in our own time. We are always assured that leading articles are written by Oxford men; and yet our most respected contemporaries constantly publish rubbish like the above. Unattached (or Non-Collegiate) students, our contemporary ought to know, are now simply a college without a hall to dine in; and nothing is more obvious in the more recent developments of our teaching than the fact that Professors now stoop to College and tutorial work, while professorial lectures are given for the most part by "combined lecturers" who are as often as not unrecognised by the University, and refused the use of a room in the Schools. It was, by the way, not so long ago that we read in the same paper of the new Medical Hall in London, that—The Middlesex Hospital has provided what, in effect, is a residential College for the accommodation of those who choose to avail themselves of its provisions. Instead of being compelled to seek lodgings anywhere in the vicinity of the Hospital, a limited number of students can obtain, at a very moderate rate, conveniently furnished rooms in a building close by, where they will be under the superintendence of a Dean and Warden, responsible to the authorities. While allowed rather more liberty than the undergraduates of Oxford or Cambridge, the students will be expected to conform to certain wholesome regulations made for the proper management of the Hall. This, it will be generally admitted, is a useful advance on the former condition of affairs.... In this way the London Medical Schools are gradually becoming a series of scattered Colleges. On the evidence of the Standard itself, then, it would not appear that the "newer tendencies are all in one direction. It is interesting to glance over a list of members of Congregation. The oldest member in standing is Canon Heurtley, who matriculated in 1823. Professor Westwood, who is the Canon's senior in actual years, matriculated only in 1861. It is a melancholy thought that many a learned Professor is, as far as Congregation is concerned, as veritable a chicken as a youthful master from whose cheeks the blushes have not yet fled. This does not apply to Professors Bonamy Price (1826) and Sylvester (1831), Sir Henry Acland (1835), the Regius Professors of Greek (1836), and of Modern History (1841). We must not forget, by the way, to sympathise with Professor Freeman. Amid the changes which have swept like a tempest over the Hebdomadal Council, we had to record the gloomy_truth that the seat on that Council occupied by the Regius Professor of Modern History had been vacated by insufficient residence. Jupiter left the Council-board, but he has happily been again restored, and Congregation will not have to tremble before a thunderbolt unfettered by the responsibility of office. Two letters have been issued by Professor Ray Lankester on the subject of his removal from the office of Examiner in the School of Natural Science last Term. The first letter, dated June 24, has been laid before Council. The first part, which deals with the personal question, Council has refused to consider; the latter part, which contains proposals for the improvement of the Examinations in Natural Science, has been referred to a committee. Professor Lankester was removed from his office on June 8, because of his failing to attend the viva voce Examination of the 7th and 8th. He claims to have acted in strict accordance with the Statutes in the course he took. Upon the merits of the case, which cannot be treated without great minuteness, it is no part of our duty to pronounce. The arguments are fully stated in the letters which the Professor has recently had printed. Doubtless The Merry Wives of Windsor does not show its author at his best, but neither does Ruddigore; and though Gilbert is always droll, still Bacon does seem down on his luck to draw so much smaller houses with so much better a caste. We of course say "Bacon," because Mr. Ignatius Donnelly, of the Irish American dynamite school of criticism, has so completely blown up the old-fashioned Shakespere theory with his infernal machine of a cryptogram, long meditated in Minnesota and now gone to the printer's devil in New York. His book, it is true, is not yet out, but he says it is very good, and even unfriendly critics admit that his evolution of the author of Romeo and Juliet, from the fish-blooded author of the essay on "Love," is a triumph of jesuitry and blarney unexpected even from the author's very suggestive name. Hitherto Bacon's only approach to romance seems to have been one short suspension of hostilities in favour of "an Alderman's daughter, a comely maiden and to his liking," but a whole erotic philosophy is now to be brought out, Venus to take her correct seat in the prima philosophia, and love-power to be laid on from the primum mobile, like gas. Bacon recognised that the union of lean philosophers with monied widows was an obvious branch of the "Philosophy of fruit" and a true picture of the marriage between the material Universe and the mind of Man. Again, the best possible defiance of the hateful Greek philosophy with its nuptial communism is clearly the having a private wife of one's own; and lastly, as he observes in the cryptogram and his other published works, how can the "vain and naughty Idols of the Theatre, the Marketplace, etc." be better put out of office than by an "idol of the heart," approved by reason and sanctioned by finance? But it is unfair to anticipate the lucid and cogent argumentation of this memorable book, which, for reasons connected with copyright, will probably be published in England under the title of "The Flogging of the Dead Mare's Nest." successful. The costumes were pretty, but the pronunciation savoured too much of Stratford-atte-Bowe or the Duke of Wellington. The "contemptible knack" of pronouncing French has still to be learnt by many at Radley, if "a colloquial knowledge of that language is to have weight." Professor Freeman has suddenly quitted the fifth century for the nineteenth. The Jubilee seems to have suggested to him the advisability of giving his own rendering of the last fifty years. He accordingly gave the first of two lectures on the subject last Thursday to an audience in which ladies had a wholesome majority. The Professor was not in such voice as in Tuesday's Congregation when he appealed to forty. champions of resolute reaction, but he made his points with his accustomed energy and precision. He was perhaps a little lengthy, and inclined to hair-splitting when he dilated on the severance of England and Hanover as an epochmaking event. But he was on firmer ground when he asserted the rights of the people to overthrow the revolutionary arrangements of princes and diplomatists, and his denunciations of the house of Hapsburg-Lorraine and of the unspeakable Turk were delivered with a reckless disregard of the thought that they might be familiar to many of his audience. A correspondent writes :— "I wish to call the public attention to a very curious and painful phenomenon which has forced itself upon my notice. I am in the habit of travelling to and from Scotland by night, passing the town of Preston at various hours between midnight and 3 a.m.; sometimes of course I am alone in the compartment, sometimes not. When the train reaches Preston my companions, if I have any, dismount, and their places are taken by three men closely muffled, who sit down without speaking, as far as possible from me. They are obviously confederates, because they eat veal pies together for a space varying from 50 minutes to 1 hour 13 minutes The poor pedestrian who, like Horace's friend, though for no like reason, avoids the struggles of the Parks, or fears to plunge in yellow Thames by the capsizing of a skiff, should perhaps be grateful when the element of danger is added to the monotonous pleasure of his diurnal grind. There is even something attractive in being potted in mistake for partridge, as one tramps across the Cumnor stubbles; one can even criticise sympathetically the language of the frustrated sportsman, but when one's moral sense is outraged as well, we may be pardoned if our heart becomes rebellious. Coming over Jacob's Ladder and along the path to Hinksey under fire from a pigeon club is neither personally safe nor morally ex--an odd practice, considering the time of night. The rehilarating. To onlookers it appears a cruel and unsportsmanlike amusement. One could not help contrasting this pigeon-peppering with the sharp "ping" of the rifles from the butts close by. The Corps is not as popular as it should be here, but the pig the volunteer shot at Hinksey shows well beside the maimed trophies of this petty warfare. One hears, too, of sparrow-shooting in the Port Meadow; of ratbaiting there are rumours abroad, and of other such amiable amusements of a cultured and leisured minority. "Our young barbarians are at play" in a new sense, regardless of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty, of certain Statutes de armis, or de reprimendis sumptibus, which, if they allow the use of arms, allow the arcus cum sagittis honestae recreationis causa, and last, but not least, of certain Police Acts for that case made and provided. The Radley Plays were, as usual-perhaps even more than usual-a success. The Andria was acted with great vivacity, and though it could not but be that the drama should suffer by the omission of the female characters and the curtailment of many of the scenes, it gained at the same time in brevity, and the concisi membra poetae were not lost. The Prologue, a very happy one, was very appropriately taken by a gentleman whose name suggests old Westminster associations, Mr. Ingram. The scenes from A Midsummer Night's Dream were naturally the most popular, and did indeed bring out most dramatic talent. The get-up of the principal characters was admirable, notably the Moon and the Wall; nor must the Dog in the Moon be forgotten. The Molière was less past varies in detail, but veal pies form the pièce de resistance. The men drink brandy, but not to excess. They never speak a word till they reach Lancaster, when the really strange part of the business begins. As soon as the train slackens speed, they rise as one man and say, nervously at first, but gaining assurance with repetition, ' This is Carnforth.' Presently one gets out on to the platform and cries again in a loud voice, 'This is Carnforth.' Then they all sit down again quietly, and remain in absolute silence till the train really reaches Carnforth, where they silently slink away. "I wish to draw notice to the following points. Whatever night train I go by, the same phenomenon occurs. This seems to show either that numerous relays of three men are, kept ready at Preston to go by all the night trains (this would point to a secret society), or else that the people of Preston, none of whom I know personally, are singularly well posted in my movements. "Secondly, has anyone else noticed the same phenomenon, or, I may say, been subjected to the same persecution? If all night travellers are dogged in the same manner, my apprehensions will be to some degree quieted, my indignation perhaps increased. If, however, no other person is conscious of a similar experience, I am forced to conclude that my life is in danger. "I may remark that on the only occasion when I ventured to return south in the same way, the same three men got in Otherwise at Carnforth and said Lancaster was Preston. the behaviour was unchanged. It is just possible that the real object of attack is the station-master at Lancaster. His brain will certainly be impaired in time if three respectable |