LIFE AND MANNERS.] THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN.

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A highly intelligent traveller, towards the year 1770, has described a great number of our country inns, and upon the whole in favourable terms.* There might be comfort in many a wayside cottage such as Izaac Walton speaks of, neat and trim, with its rosemary-strewn sheets, its dish of new-caught trout, and its ballads on the walls. There might be splendour in some few houses, as "The Castle" at Marlborough, along the great Bath road, and other lines of daily and luxurious thoroughfare. Even in those of humble pretensions there was seldom wanting a secret bin, from the dust and cobwebs of which the landlord could draw upon occasion a bottle of excellent Bordeaux. Travellers of rank were frequently expected to call for such even when they had no need of it; "for the good," phrase went

as the

"of the house." But the dinner was seldom equal to the wine, and the charges were often exorbitantly high. When, in 1763, the Duke de Nivernois, the new ambassador from France, landed at Dover, he was astonished at the charges in his bill. This was no new matter of complaint. So early as 1619 we find Lord Herbert of Cherbury say: "At Calais, I remember, my cheer was "twice as good as at Dover, and my reckoning half as "cheap."**

Besides the slowness, the risk, and the cost of travelling, which might tend to diminish the journeys to London in that age, the country gentlemen were also in some measure kept away by their estrangement from the two first princes of the House of Hanover. Not a few who had been loyal subjects of Queen Anne disliked the reign of her German cousins, and began to cast a wistful look towards her nearer kindred beyond the sea. Without partaking, or desiring to partake, fame; above all, "the bold Turpin," who was hanged at York for horsestealing, in 1739. See his Life in the Newgate Calendars of Mr. William Jackson (vol. ii. pp. 331-349.) Many of them showed great pride in their own achievements. "Not know me!" said John Rann to the tollman on the Tottenham Road, "why I am Sixteen-string Jack, the famous high"wayman!" (Ibid. vol. v. p. 142.)

See the Northern Tour, by Arthur Young, vol. iv. pp. 586-594. ** Life of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, p. 131. ed. 1770.

the Jacobite designs, they would at least, while giving in due form, "the King," as their first toast after dinner, make a motion with the glass to pass it on the other side of the water-decanter which stood before them, and imply or speak the words, "over the water." They would revile all adherents of the Court as a parcel of "Roundheads and Hanover Rats."* Roundhead, as is well known, was the by-word first applied to the Calvinistic preachers in the Civil Wars, from the close-cropped hair which they affected as distinguished from the flowing curls of the Cavaliers. The second phrase was of far more recent origin. It so chanced that not long after the accession of the House of Hanover, some of the brown, that is the German or Norway rats, were first brought over to this country (in some timber as is said); and being much stronger than the black, or till then the common rats, they in many places quite extirpated the latter. ** The word (both the noun and the verb to rat) was first, as we have seen, levelled at the converts to the government of George the First, but has by degrees obtained a wider meaning and come to be applied to any sudden and mercenary change in politics.

While we may reject in all the more essential features such gross caricatures as those of Squire Western and Parson Trulliber, we yet cannot deny that many both of the country gentlemen and clergy in that age showed signs of a much neglected education. For this both our Universities, but Oxford principally, must be blamed. "I have heard, says Dr. Swift, "more than one or two persons of high rank "declare they could learn nothing more at Oxford and Cam"bridge than to drink ale and smoke tobacco; wherein I "firmly believed them, and could have added some hundred "examples from my own observations in one of these Uni

*This was the phrase of Squire Western (Tom Jones, book v. c. 14.). See the ceremony of the water decanter described in Redgauntlet, letter iv. ** See Pennant's British Zoology, vol. i. p. 115. ed. 1776. Though the brown species bears with us the name of the Norway Rat, Mr. Pennant assures us that "it is an animal quite unknown in Scandinavia." Rats of any kind were, it appears, first brought to America by a ship from Antwerp.

LIFE AND MANNERS.]

"versities,"

meaning that of Oxford.* At Cambridge such men as Professor Saunderson had kept up the flame, worthily maintaining her high mathematical renown. But even there it is plain, from the letters of Gray, how little taste for poetry and literature lingered in her ancient halls. Oxford, on the other hand, so justly famed both before that age and after it, had then sunk down to the lowest pitch of dullness and neglect. Gibbon tells us of his tutor at Magdalen College, that this gentleman well remembered he had a salary to receive, and only forgot he had a duty to perform. The future historian was never once summoned to attend even the ceremony of a lecture, and in the course of one winter might make unreproved, in the midst of term, a tour to Bath, a visit into Buckinghamshire, and a few excursions to London.** We may incline to suspect the testimony of the sceptic against any place of Christian education, but we shall find it (allowing only for the superior license of every Gentleman Commoner), confirmed in its full extent by so excellent and so eminent a member of our Church as Dr. Johnson. Here is his own account of his outset at Pembroke College. "The first day after I came I waited on my tutor "Mr. Jordan, and then stayed away four. On the sixth Mr. "Jordan asked me why I had not attended. I answered, I "had been sliding in Christ Church meadow."*** This apology appears to have been given without the least compunction, and received without the least reproof.

It is painful to read such charges against an University so rich in her foundations, so historic in her fame, and standing once more so high in the respect of those who have been trained within her walls. But the case is even worse, if possible, when we come to her system of Degrees.

In

* Essay on Modern Education, Works, vol. ix. p. 373. ed. 1814. The Dean, however, afterwards limits his remark to "young heirs sent thither "only for form."

"Memoirs of my Life," p. 70. ed. 1839. Dean Milman, himself for many years a Professor at Oxford, adds in a note (p. 86.), that, from the best authority, he has understood Gibbon's observations to have been at that time by no means exaggerated.

*** Life of Boswell, ch. iii.

granting these, the Laudian Statutes still in name and theory prevailed. But in practice there appeared a degree of laxity which, were the subject less important, would be wholly ludicrous. Lord Eldon, then Mr. John Scott of University College, and who passed the Schools in February, 1770, gave the following account of them: "An examination "for a Degree at Oxford was in my time a farce. I was "examined in Hebrew, and in History. 'What is the Hebrew "for the place of a skull?' I replied, 'Golgatha.' 'Who "founded University College?' I stated (though, by the "way, the point is sometimes doubted), that King Alfred 'founded it. 'Very well, Sir,' said the Examiner, ‘you are "competent for your Degree!'"; Similar to this is the description in 1780 by the Rev. Vicesimus Knox: "The "Masters take a most solemn oath that they will examine "properly and impartially. Dreadful as all this appears, "there is always found to be more of appearance in it than "reality, for the greatest dunce usually gets his TESTIMONIUM "signed with as much ease and credit as the finest genius. The Statutes require that he should translate familiar "English phrases into Latin. And now is the time when the "Masters show their wit and jocularity. I have known the 'questions on this occasion to consist of an inquiry into the "pedigree of a race-horse!"** The Commissioners of 1850, who quote these testimonies, add, that at the time in question the Examiners were chosen by the candidate himself from among his friends, and that he was expected to provide a dinner for them after the examination was over. Oaths upon this subject, as upon most others, proved to be no safeguard. Oaths at Oxford were habitually taken because the law required them, and habitually disregarded, because their fulfilment had become impossible in some cases, and inconvenient in many more.

From this ignominious state the studies of the University were not rescued till the commencement of the present cen

*Twiss's Life of Lord Eldon, vol. i. p. 57. ** Works of Dr. V, Knox, vol. i. p. 377.

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tury. In 1800 a new Statute was passed, chiefly, it is said, at the instance of Dr. Eveleigh, Provost of Oriel*, which reformed the whole system of Examination, and awarded honours to the ablest candidates. By another Statute, in 1807, a further great improvement was effected. A division then was made between the Classical and the Mathematical Schools, and the first who attained the highest rank in each was a future Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel.

The last century at Oxford was indeed as a valley between hills. Look either at the age which preceded, or at the age which followed it, and own their intellectual elevation. At either of those periods a traveller from London might, as he left the uplands, and crossed the Cherwell bridge, have wandered through the proud array before him of pinnacles and battlements, from where spread the cloisters of Magdalen, and the groves that bear Addison's name - to the books and the galleries of the Bodleian, to that unequalled chapel of New College, or to that noble bequest of Wolsey, the wide quadrangle of Christ Church, and all the way met nothing that misbecame the Genius of the Place—nothing to clash with the lofty and reverent thoughts which it suggested. He would have seen many men of eminent learning and high spirit, men not unworthy of the scenes in which they dwelt, men not misplaced among the high-wrought works of Art, or the storehouses of ancient knowledge, the foundations of Saints, and the monuments of Martyrs. There, in the reign of Charles the First, he might have seen the Heads and Fellows cheerfully melt their plate or pour down their money for the service of their Royal Master, — willing to dare deprivation and poverty,— willing to go forth unfriended into exile, rather than bate one jot of their dutiful allegiance both to Church and King. There, in the reign of James the Second, he might have seen those cloisters of Magdalen the last and the firmest citadel of freedom. Or, if the lot of the traveller whom we suppose had been cast on these later days, if he had visited Oxford under * Report of the Oxford University Commission, p. 60. ed. 1852.