Aspects of Modern Oxford, by a Mere Don

Nor are beer and skittles unadulterated the lot of the undergraduate either-whatever the impression that his sisters and cousins may derive from the gaieties of the Eights and 'Commem.' For the spirit of the century and the 'Sturm und Drang' of a restless world has got hold of the 'Man,' too, and will not suffer him to live quite so peacefully as the Verdant Greens and Bouncers of old. Everybody must do something; they must be 'up and doing,' or else they have a good chance of finding themselves 'sent down.' I do not speak of the reading man, who naturally finds his vocation in a period of activity-but rather of the man who is by nature non-reading, and has to sacrifice his natural desires to the pressure of public opinion acting through his tutor. Perhaps he is made to go in for honours; but even if he reads only for a pass, the schools are always with him-he is always being pulled up to see how he is growing; or at least he must be serving his College in one way or another-if not by winning distinction in the schools, by toiling on the river or the cricket-field. Then he is expected to interest himself in all the movements of the last quarter of the nineteenth century; he must belong to several societies; he cannot even be properly idle without forming himself into an association for the purpose. If he wants to make a practice of picnicing on the Cherwell he founds a 'Cherwell Lunch Club,' with meetings, no doubt, and possibly an 'organ' to advocate his highly meritorious views. An excellent and a healthy life, no doubt! but yet one is tempted sometimes to fear that the loafer may become extinct; and then where are our poets to come from? For it is a great thing to be able to loaf well: it softens the manners and does not allow them to be fierce; and there is no place for it like the streams and gardens of an ancient University. If a man does not learn the great art of doing nothing there, he will never acquire it anywhere else; and it is there, and in the summer term, that this laudable practice will probably survive when it is unknown even in Government Offices.

For there is a season of the year when even the sternest scholar or athlete and the most earnest promoter of Movements yields to the genius loci; when the summer term is drawing to a close, and the May east winds have yielded to the warmth of June, and the lilacs and laburnums are blossoming in College gardens; when the shouting and the glory and the bonfires of the Eights are over, and the invasion of Commemoration has not yet begun. Then, if ever, is the time for doing nothing. Then the unwilling victim of lectures shakes off his chains and revels in a temporary freedom, not unconnected with the fact that his tutor has gone for a picnic to Nuneham. Perhaps he has been rowing in his College Eight, and is entitled to repose on the laurels of 'six bumps;' perhaps he is not in the schools himself, and can afford to pity the unfortunates who are. And how many are the delightful ways of loafing! You may propel the object of your affections-if she is up, as she very often is at this time-in a punt on that most academic stream, the Cherwell, while Charles (your friend) escorts the chaperon in a dingey some little distance in front; you may lie lazily in the sun in Worcester or St. John's gardens, with a novel, or a friend, or both; you may search Bagley and Powderhill for late bluebells, and fancy that you have found 'high on its heathy ridge' the tree known to Arnold and Clough. Or if you are more enterprising you may travel further afield and explore the high beech woods of the Chiltern slopes and the bare, breezy uplands of the Berkshire downs; but this, perhaps, demands more energy than belongs to the truly conscientious loafer.

Well, let the idle undergraduate make the most of his time now; it is not likely that he will be able to loaf in after-life. Nor (for the matter of that) will his successors be allowed to take their ease here in Oxford even in the summer, in those happy days when the University is to be turned into an industrial school, and a place for the education no longer of the English gentleman but the British citizen. Will that day ever come? The spirit of the age is determined that it shall. But perhaps the spirit of the place may be too much for it yet.