MR. GOLD WIN SMITH ON OXFORD.* INFORMAL guide-books are becoming
quite the fashion, and amongst works of this description an honourable place must be accorded to this charming little volume from the pen of
Professor Goldwin Smith. The method which he adopts is at once original and effective. Imagining himself on the top of the Radcliffe Library on a fine summer's day, he takes for his text the city of palaces which lies spread out at his feet, and delivers a causerie to an imaginary audience of American visitors, on the foundation, growth, and reform of what he rightly styles a great national institution. Of its effect on American readers it is difficult to speak with certainty ; but
few, if any, true sons of Oxford can fail to be confirmed in their filial affection by the writer's obvious enthusiasm, if they do not learn something new and striking from his stimulating and suggestive pages. Even a journalist may derive in- struction from it, though it is not designed to correct that peculiar form of journalistic ignorance recently illustrated by a paragraph which went the rounds of the papers to the effect that a rising young politician had " taken a first-class in
the examination for the M.A. degree." Nor, again, does Pro- fessor Goldwin Smith dilate on that aspect of University life which chiefly appeals to the average reader,—we mean the athletic. Indeed, his attitude towards pastime is unsympathetic, if not actually hostile. No mention is made of the redoubt-
able Mr. C. B. Fry ; and in the only passage in which specific reference is made to games, the writer commits the enormity of alluding to a cricketer's " paddings," instead of his pads.
This offence, though it may provoke the just resentment of the subscribers to the Grace Testimonial Fund, will not be regarded as very heinous by American readers. The leading New York humorous paper has recently observed a propos of
cricket, that "it takes an Englishman to stand in the sun ten hours and do nothing, and see others do nothing, and call it fun."
The tone taken by Professor Goldwin Smith throughout his • causerie is in the main optimistic, both as regards the present and future of Oxford. But although a firm believer in the good results which have already flowed from Parliamentary Commissions—quorum pars magna felt—and the emancipation
of the University from the mediievalism of its statutes, there are certain aspects of that mediwvalism which appeal to him with curious force. " Those," he writes in one place, " who remember the old Common-Room life, which is now depart- ing, cannot help looking back with a wistful eye to its bachelor ease, its pleasant companionship, its interesting talk and interchange of thought, its potations neither ' deep' nor dull." In another passage he sounds an almost warning note :—" Oxford is now, indeed, rather too attractive ; her academical society is in danger of being swamped by the influx of non-academical residents." The pith of this brilliant little volume may be found in the following eloquent and even poetic summary :—
" The buildings stand, to mark by their varying architecture the succession of the changeful centuries through which the University has passed. In the Libraries are the monuments of the successive generations of learning. But the tide of youthful life that from age to age has flowed through College, quad- rangle, hall and chamber, through University examination-rooms and Convocation Houses, has lett no memorials of itself except the entries in the University and College books; dates of matriculation, which tell of the bashful boy standing before the august Vice-Chancellor at entrance ; dates of degrees, which tell of the youth putting forth, from his last haven of tutelage, on the waves of the wide world. Hither they thronged, century after century, in the costume and with the equipments of their times, from mediaeval abbey, grange and hall, from Tudor manor- house and homestead, from mansion, rectory and commercial city of a later day, bearing with them the hopes and affections of numberless homes. Year after year they departed, lingering for a moment at the gate to say farewell t' College friends, the bond with whom they vowed to preserve, but whom they were never to • Oxford and her Coll,ges : a View from the Radcliffe Library. By Go dwin D.C.L. London : Macmillan and Co. s3e again, then stepp,d forth into the chances and perils of life, while the shadow o a the College dial moved on its unceasing round. I they ha I only left their names in the rooms which they had occupied, Vi•-re would be more of history than we have in these dry entries in the books. But, at all events, let not fancy trxwe a Ad- oL y of student life at Oxford out of Verdant Green.' There are realities corresponding to Verdant Green,' and the moral is, that many youths come to the University who had better stay away, since none get any good and few fail to get some harm, save those who have an aptitude for study. But the dissi- pation, the noisy suppers, the tandem-driving, the fox-hunting, the running away from Proctors, or, what is almost as bad, the childish devotion to games and sports, as if they were the end of existence, though they are too common a part of undergraduate life in the University of the rich, are far from being the whole of it. Less than ever are they the whole of it since University reform and a more liberal curriculum have increased, as certainly they have, industry and frugality at the same time. Of the two or three thousand lamps which to-night will gleam from those windows, few will light the supper-table or the gambling-table ; most will light the book, youthful effort, ambition, aspiration, hope. College character and friendship have no artist to paint them,—at least as yet they have had none. But whatever of poetry belongs to them is present in full measure here."
It only remains to be added that Professor Goldwin Smith's little book—a masterpiece of condensation illumined by many brilliant and vivid sayings—is illustrated by a number of excellent reproductions of photographs of Oxford, and sup- plied with a capital index. We cordially re-echo the wish he expresses, that " Oxford and Cambridge having now, by emancipation and reform, been reunited to the nation, may also be reunited to the race ; and that to these, not less than to the Universities of Germany, the eyes of Americans desirous of studying at a European as well as at an American University may henceforth be turned." It is in this way, far more effectively than by ducal alliances, that the bond between the Old Country and the New may be drawn closer in the years to come, in spite of the Monroe doctrine and abortive international yacht races.
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