FEW of those who undergo the noisy pleasures of the "Encænia" at Oxford ever think of the benefactors whose liberality the University on that occasion commemorates: fewer still bear in mind the solemn Act, round which, like beautiful parasites, the festivities of the Commemoration-week have gathered.

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I have no wish to describe here the Exercises and Disputations, of the existence and dignity of which that Act was once an acknowledgment; even under Elizabeth they were widowed of their mediaval meaning and value, and to breathe life into the dead bones of " nerals" and of "ordinaries," of "coursing in Lent," "collecting in Austins," "questioning," "opposing," "moderating," "determining," would be a work of time I desire rather to sketch the accessories of the celebration of the Act during the period I have chosen, passing over much and combining into one picture the details of many years.

The day of Commemoration of founders and benefactors has always, I believe, been settled by the University authorities with a view to the duration of Trinity Term and without strict reference to the time of the Act: indeed, though the "Encania" are an ancient institution, copied from the Anniversary Feasts held by Christians on the days on which their churches were founded, the application to them of the term "Commemoration" is comparatively new. The Act, however, seems never to have been held but on the first Tuesday in July.

In the Middle Age, the functions of science as of religion had been performed in a manner histrionic and symbolical: in them, as in the deeds of law, men, still under the spell of Roman feeling, and wanting proofs which they could touch and see, set great store on significant

temptible, and degrees testified to the learning of those who obtained them: one became, for instance, a Doctor in Divinity-not, as now, by borrowing from Sanderson or Calvin and delivering to empty benches what our grandfathers called a "wall lecture," but after discussions, formal already, but subtle and trying. Academical training lay in public Exercises, and of these at the Act there was a sort of state performance. The Act was at the same time, as it is in theory still, the event after which Doctors and Masters made in the course of the foregoing twelve months became bound to superintend for two years the exercises of others, and so entered on their "necessary regency."

But when the long effort of the mediæval mind was rewarded by the perfect regeneration of literature, men broke from "the bondage of the figure and shadow," and cared less for forms: lighted by the lamp of classical antiquity, they tore down what Döllinger calls the "fences and bulwarks, behind which "Grammar and Philosophy had shel"tered their scholastic vacuity and "incompetence." Then, too, studies which had once drawn so many to Oxford, Bologna, Padua, and Naples, and which now draw so many to Calcutta, as the only stepping-stones to places in the public service, no longer led the way to political preferment, and society demanded a change of system. The very Laudian Statutes complied with its demands: they recognised the revolution, and made the Oxford course less scholastic. Disputations fell into disfavour; Exercises were but perfunctorily done; the use of Latin began to be abandoned; the dispensation of the Puritans (though we have Clarendon's well-supported admission of their mode

after the restitution of the king and royal family, travellers found the schools a wilderness-the private tutors had taken away nearly all the students.

At the celebration of the Act, however, there had begun to be held a series of galas such as now brighten Commemoration-week; and these, as they grew in gaiety and in number, kept alive the interest which the Exercises could sustain no longer, and vivified the deadness of the Act.

In Trinity Term, therefore, strangers went in throngs to Oxford. Even ladies risked their necks and braved the other perils of the journey. The country squire lumbered along from his manor-house, the vicar ambled in from his parsonage, the Inn of Court man left his wife in his chambers, and the Cantab his companions in their fraction of a room. Nor were stranger faces wanting-Africans and Germans met in the High Street, and from Philippi, Languedoc, and Sweden, prelates, scholars, and soldiers took their honorary degrees.

To imagine the appearance of the Oxford in which they assembled, let us fancy ourselves on our way to an Act at the beginning of the last century. Leaving in our rear the "cloudy brow" of "skyclustering Shotover"-its trees "the lashes of one of the eyes of England" -and going down the slanted lane which leads to the middle of Headington Hill, we have glimpses of the silvery line of the Isis, as it runs down between well-wooded banks from a city of pinnacles and towers; we cross Petty-Pont, the rude stone bridge over the branching Cherwell, and a gracious pile on our right reminds us of Waynflete and of Wolsey; on our left lies "the Physic Garden," which has long borne comparison with that of Paris. Quaint rows of tottering houses (their upper stories, however, less prominent and "barbarous" than those of other houses in the city) border on the High Street; at the bottom of it, we pass under the East Gate-which lay across it above Long Wall, as Temple Bar across Fleet Street. Next the front

the antique grace of the North-country college, and soon (turning sharply up St. Katharine Street, between All Souls' and St. Mary's) we find ourselves in School Street: there, not the Radcliffe, with its swelling dome, but the ruins of many an old school and hall lie between us and Brasenose. A glance at the relief of "The Marriage of St. Katharine," at the end of New College Lane, and we swerve into Broad Street, past the rising Clarendon. There the Theatre and the Ashmolean are new; Exeter is venerable; before Balliol lies a wooded terrace-like the "shop-board" which now sequesters the Merchant Taylors' college of St. John the Baptist. Threading Friars' Entry and the westward courts, once the demesne of the White Friars and the Playing Fields of Oxford, the ruined Gothic library of Gloucester Hall still faces us, and not the trim classic front of Worcester; or, glancing southward, by St. Michael's, where Latimer preached, we see the bars behind which he was imprisoned, the still, stern countenance of the Gate Bocardo.

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Beyond, "in Christ Church reverend quadrangle," or in the bay-windows of the then Gothic Peckwater's Inn, or among the remains of Canterbury Hall, our eye is taken by the scarlet of Doctors anything but "Seraphic." Hard by, "the Skimmerians" scowl, as Lollards and Constitutioners" of Merton and Oriel read, with beaming faces, Mr. Addison's latest exposition of the ideas of progress and commerce; and, elsewhere, Wadham and Exeter wince under the sneers of the Jacobite Doctors of St. John's and Balliol. The Fellows of Magdalen are drinking with their neighbour, the host of "The Greyhound;" the Fellows of All Souls' in their favourite, "The Three Tuns" (like lazy triflers as they are), arrange a parody of the execution of Charles I. with the heads of calves and woodcocks. The quidnuncs crowd the coffee-houses in Queen's and New College Lanes. The "skulls" and the proctors are trudging to indulge in port, prejudice, and persecution, in