deal of this may be due to Oxford impressibility. Oxford is the very Bethel of heroworship; Newman first, then Gladstone, has been her idol for a quarter of a century. She is slow in admiring, but when she does, her admiration soon passes into superstition.

The Oxonian of fifteen or twenty years ago looked forward, in most instances, to a curacy and pupils. If rich, he had ideals which were constantly blossoming into Gothic brick and mortar - a church, a college, a school, a penitentiary. Heaven only knows how much talent and self-devotion has been hidden under the close waistcoat of many who have passed from a first and a fellowship to a country living. At the present day the bar, India, Australia, the diplomatic service, the House of Commons, the counting-house, even the farm and the ship, are gaining more from Oxford than the Church can attract. According to Voltaire's terrible epigram, the Holy Roman empire was neither holy nor Roman, nor yet an empire. Similarly the Oxford theological school is not theological nor Oxonian, and least of all a school. It is simply non-existent. And of the two great" schools of the English Church" (formerly and justly so called) one has now not much more to do with the Church directly, however much indirectly, than Eton has to do with the Horse Guards.

ther" but St. Anselm, and that only in a single treatise.

The best characteristics of the respective universities on their strong side seem to us to be as follows. If a young man aspires to be a man of science or a mathematician, he will of course seek Dublin or Cambridge. If his talent is for minute criticism of the classics, Cambridge must once more bear the palm. If he desires to know moral science extensively, he will enter Dublin; if analytically, at Cambridge; if synthetically, at Oxford. If he would prepare for a public examination, we have little doubt that Dublin would pay him best. To develop the faculties harmoniously, to give subtlety of thought and elegance of expression, to bestow at once classical form, logical acuteness, and ethical refinement, is the glory of Oxford. For a clergyman, Cambridge or even Dublin is now to be preferred. For a lawyer, all three are perhaps equally good. For a tutor, or schoolmaster, simply as a general "grinder" or "coach," Dublin is unrivalled. For a man of letters, Oxford is slightly in advance of Cambridge, and much before Dublin. For a statesman Oxford is the best school of the three.

Each university has also a weaker side. An Oxford man is not rarely "viewy," sentimental, conceited, and unpractical—at the Cambridge, so much more traditionally mercy of extreme theories, like the unhappy Liberal than Oxford, as Macaulay has taken knights-errant who have followed Newman care to point out, is now decidedly more con- and Comte. He may be ignorant of eleservative. Its traditions were not theologi-mentary mathematics, and incapable of cal, though it numbered Barrow and Water-understanding the Newtonian system. A land, Taylor and Bramhall, among its sons. Cambridge graduate is not seldom sharp, self-sufficient, and narrow. A Dublin man But Laud and the non-jurors, Butler again, is pretty frequently provincial in thought as Jones of Nayland, Dr. Johnson ("respect- well as accent, given to what English young able and insupportable," as a French writer men call "bumptiousness," and peculiarly most falsely calls him), Mant, Van Milatent, liable to accesses of political and religious Howley, Routh, the mild orthodoxy and fanaticism. The Oxford man at his worst quiet learning of the better English clergy, is a prim and conceited dilettante, were decidedly Oxonian. best, a large and liberal thinker. The CamOxford has no theologians like Goodwin, temptuousness or algebraical pedantry,―at bridge man at his worst exhibits stupid conHardwick, Trench, and several others of his best he is a cyclopedic scholar like WheCambridge. Mr. Mansel and the clever well, a highly cultivated gentleman like Heryoung prelate who is now Archbishop of schel, a finished writer like Trench. The York are rather thinkers and speculators Dublin man at his worst is a vulgar preacher than divines properly so called. Mr. Man- or a bigoted anti-Maynooth agitator; but sel knows more of Aristotle and Kant than the good specimens of Dublin education are of firstrate excellence. Oxford and Camof biblical criticism or patristic learning, and bridge would be proud of thinkers like Archbishop Thomson's Bampton lectures do Archer Butler, of writers like Bishop Fitznot evince much acquaintance with any Eng-gerald, of lawyers like Cairns, of orators lish theologian but Magee, or with any "fa-like Whiteside and Plunket.

Contemporary

at his

From The London Review.
MARRIAGE CARDS.

has been smoking a cheroot in the drawing-room, or that Tom's elder brother, who ENGLAND expects every man to do his is a puppy in the Guards, has five different duty, excepting, perhaps, clergymen, who can kinds of umbrellas for five different kinds of be hardly expected to do it, if they can get rainy days. Arabella and Fitzsimmons, anybody else to do it for them; but it has married at St. George's, Hanover Square, never been said that England expects every with eighteen bribesmaids in white silk woman to do her duty; nor does it appear to dresses trimmed with swansdown, and a be known whether Britannia could conscien- bishop to bestow his blessing on the bride tiously say that she did expect it, or whether in a voice broken with emotion-and yet "no she was ever impartially zealous upon the cards"! This is another of those monstrous subject. The time has come, however, for innovations which are to be expected from a clearing up the doubt. If fugitive symp-generation which has no reverence for tratoms are to be deemed of much importance,dition, or for its elders, or for the decencies a large and highly respected branch of the of society, and which is inbred with the feminine sex seems almost inclined to give most latitudinarian and revolutionary ideas. way. The bridesmaids of England have an This comes of Catholic Emancipation and the onerous and a high office to fulfil; and it Reform Bill, and what is called the march should be their endeavor to discharge its of intellect. It was to be expected; yes, it serious duties without swerving or shrinking was to be expected. It is only another from responsibilities. Any indications of a proof that the flood-gates of radicalism are feeling of dissatisfaction or disorganization opened and that the landmarks of society on this part of our social system are of are about to be removed. Such may, no themselves a species of misfortune. Vague doubt, have been the sentiment of the old disquiet and unrest among the outlying na-family friend, called forth in a sudden flash tionalities of the Continent come to us as of anger and astonishment, and who can familiar phenomena, and we are able to bear say that they were not such as would do up accordingly. The Epirote provinces, men honor to his head and to his heart ? Bay, perhaps, are at it again. There has been If everybody who married belonged to one a rising of the tribes in the Caucasus, or the little coterie, which knew when a marriage ladies of the Sultan's harem, in a sudden was on the tapis, and in which no marriage burst of domestic disappointment, have mur-ever altered the social relations of the "high dered those who are their legal and natural contracting" parties, marriage cards might guardians. To such Continental rumors and turmoils the country is accustomed, and it can bear them with Christian equanimity. But a rebellious spirit among bridesmaids confined to that little world which meets itis a new and overwhelming catastrophe, and comes from a quarter where all, it was thought, was peace. It has long been clear that something was in the wind. At last open signs of the disaffection have shown themselves in the marriage column of the Times, in the shape of a dropping fire of announcements of "No cards. " When the first announcement of "No cards" was brought home forcibly to the mind of some friend of the family, who may have belonged to the old school, as he sat after dinner with the paper at his club, it is more than probable that it produced upon him that peculiar old gentleman's feeling of the end of all things being indeed at hand, which is wont suddenly to overcome us when we hear that Tom (just home for the holidays from Eton)

be of no especial use. This, however, is not the case. The English world of gentlemen and ladies is a wide one, and is by no means

self nightly at the one most fashionable ball of London. Scotland is not too far to marry into Cornwall. Buckinghamshire would make very little of going through the wedding ceremony with York. Welsh heiresses, unlike Welsh mutton, are a resource bestowed impartially by a kind Providence on all parts of this favored realm alike. A flying golden bridge connects Belgravia and the Hampstead Road. Mayfair has been known to unite itself to Clapham with much apparent satisfaction to itself. How is it possible that marriage cards can cease to be a necessity when such is the state of the social world? Few people belong to a set of gods and goddesses, all of whom are universally known; all of whom are on an equality; and all of whom intermarry only among themselves.

obliged to lay the fault on those whose privilege and tearful pleasure it is to deck the victim for the sacrifice, and to despatch afterwards to all who know her the card contain

Most Englishmen and Englishwomen of the upper classes have numberless friends and acquaintances in all quarters of the world, who are not likely to hear for a certainty of the great event, and who, when they do hearing the information of her fate. of it, are glad to be personally informed that The time for despatching the marriage the great event changes nothing in old cards has hitherto been understood to be friendships, and that not even on account of during the dull afternoon that follows the new ties is old acquaintance to be forgot. departure of the wedding-guests. We hope To such as these the absence of marriage and trust that it is not from any unjustifiable cards makes a considerable difference. It is feeling as to the exercise or fatigues of a a cold and uninteresting piece of news to wedding-day that the bridesmaids feel a dislearn through the medium of a newspaper ga- inclination to discharge the additional yet zette that a schoolfellow of one's youth has simple duty. Nothing could be plainer than married out in India. It becomes a very dif- that the fatigues of the day do not fall on ferent affair when the white envelope with them. Got up in rich lace or tulle regardless the whiter cards, tied by the well-known sil- of expense, they occupy a cool and spacious ver cord, appears after its long journey from place during the ceremony; and are not the other hemisphere upon your breakfast crowded into an uncomfortable position table. Old recollections laid aside for many among the collective hats of the assembly years are revived; rusty friendships bur- upon the pulpit steps. They arrive at breaknished up into warmer and brighter ones; fast fresh and vigorous, not jaded with the and Brown from Richmond, in return for a incessant toil of protecting one's own hat, white card, sends back a loving wish to Jones and not treading on the rest; a toil to be upon the Ganges. In theory the wedding- performed under the exhausting mask of decard is particularly well-timed, because it is vout attention to the service, and an emotion at a moment of great and absorbing interest of sympathy for the performers. Their breakto ourselves that it is most important to fast is for them a gala hour, instead of pointmake our friends feel that we are not too ab- ing to a vista of nightmare and unrest. Their sorbed to think of them. In practice, it is young constitutions now, doubtless, stand convenient as a means of continuing or drop- drinking champagne and eating all kinds of ping an acquaintance. There may be people soups and entrées at an hour at which nature whom the husband is not desirous of intro- stands aghast. They do not feel feebly bufducing to his wife, or there may be people feted, and driven by circumstances over whose acquaintance the husband does not which they have no control, from one glass care to make for himself, and wishes his wife to another, till agitated at once by the sentito drop. It is right that every man at the ments of the hour, and by the unusual and time of his marriage should have this oppor- precocious supply of feverish beverages, they tunity of selecting his own and his wife's find themselves, when the afternoon is not friends afresh, for without it the news will half begun, in a state of maudlin indigestion, be certainly known to all who are concerned They are not forced to tire themselves out about the bride and bridegroom. This inno- by keeping up a show of gushing sympathy vation comes from that graceful and ingenious for the united company, which no serioussex which believes that the marriage column minded Englishman could possibly consent is read, next to the Bible, by all classes of the to feel, if he were not driven half wild by the population with perennial vigor. An an- champagne and the speechifying, both getnouncement appearing in the literary gynæ- ting into his head together. Then, again, let ceum of the Times is as good, we have no doubt, them look at what men have to go through as a notice to all Englishwomen. Unfortu- when they leave the house! What is a man nately this is one part of the Times which men to do at three o'clock in the afternoon, after do not so assiduously prefer at breakfast-time. the agitation and the repletion to which he The idea of making it legal notice to all has been exposed ? He cannot walk, for his mankind emanated from no masculine brain. head is aching with the scene; and he is too Dux fæmina facti. If it emanated (as it sleepy to read; and he cannot bear the noise must have emanated) from a woman, we are of the street; and he wants fresh air and to

be let alone. A gloomy cloud prevents him from looking forward to any dinner with even moderate patience. His day is ended prematurely before the evening has begun. He has nowhere to go to, and nothing he cares for in the world that he is fit to do. If any bridesmaid is inclined to repine or to fancy the day has been less pleasant than it might have been, she has only to think of what others have thought it right to suffer, and her lot will presently appear a light one.

difficulty, is to send nobody any cards at all; by which means the amphibious friend is neither insulted nor encouraged. If the "no cards" system be invented to meet this social obstacle, it is still an objectionable one, for the very reason that it leaves the amphibious friend where he was, and does not better matters. It would not make him much worse or more objectionable to go through the ceremony of acknowledging his existence, and the other alternative might At any rate, cheerfulness and industry are have the effect of driving him straight to the the best recipe for feminine discontent. water, and thus putting, pleasantly and merThe process of directing and despatching the cifully, an end to his amphibious character. wedding-cards is the best that is possible for On all grounds, then, we should wish reraising the spirits which have been depressed spectfully, but firmly, that this movement by the gloomy affair of the morning. It is, among the bridesmaids should be supof course, possible that it is not to save pressed. Wedding-cards ought to be spared. trouble that the abuse of dispensing with If it were not impolitic to suppose that a this process has crept in. Every family in bridesmaid could understand a dead lanthe world has a certain number of what may guage, one might employ the words of the be called amphibious friends; that is to say, poet—perituris parcite chartis; but we have friends whom one is always wishing at the no intention, in disputing against fair oppobottom of the sea, and who ought to be at the nents, to be so unwise as to allow our case to bottom of the sea, but who are still always rest upon its pure logical merits. It may be turning up on dry land. The horrid ques- of some service to suggest that suppressing tion is whether or no the amphibious friend one part of a ceremony is only one step to shall have cards. To send cards to others suppressing another. To-day it is a coup and not to him, is to slap him smartly and d'état against wedding-cards. To-morrow it distinctly on the face. To send him cards may-who does not shudder at the thought? is more than human nature can endure.-be a coup d'état directed against bridesThe obvious, but unworthy solution of the maids!

MONSIEUR JACK KETCH, HOMME DE LET-1 of eking out a living, the publication of these reTRES.-The French are great devourers of Mémoires, we are well aware, but we little suspected that their taste would ever sink so low as to devour Les Mémoires de Mons. Sanson. The Sansons have held in France the hereditary post of public executioner for ages past. Long before the Reign of Terror, the Calcraft of France was represented by a Sanson. It would seem, however, that business has lately been so bad-the stereotyped tag of circonstances atténuantes which a French jury almost invariably appends to its verdict, even in the most flagrant cases has robbed the executioner of so many of his dread perquisites that the family has in despair been compelled to send in its resignation. Distress has driven the Sansons to adopt as their motto "Live and let Live ;" and hence, by way

volting memoirs. At one time we had our Newgate school of literature that made heroes of thieves and highwaymen. In the like manner, it would seem that the literature of France, after frequenting the lowest of low haunts, and revelling in every possible profligacy and vice has at last gone to the gallows. It has received its final coup de grâce from the guillotine. Does it not appear only a just gradation, and fit termination, in scaling the ladder of immorality, that writers like Dumas fils and the authors of Fanny and Madame de Bovary, should be succeeded by a Sanson? It is the crowning degradation. The last act of justice that Mons. Sanson, before retiring from office, should have performed, ought to have been to burn his own Mémoires.-Punch.

From The Spectator. A ROBINSON CRUSOE PAINTER. *

Drovers visit his hut in the vain hope that it may turn out to be a novel species of MR. HAMERTON has in these volumes dram-shop, the women suppose him to be a made a very interesting contribution to the teller of fortunes, and the children fancy somewhat slender stock of artist literature. him the proprietor of a travelling menagThe narration of his adventures in search erie. The humor of this position does not of the beautiful, and the means by which he seem to strike Mr. Hamerton so much as was enabled to paint from nature on the the fact that he loses caste in the popular wildest moors of Lancashire and the Scot- estimate, that the rough peasantry treat him tish Highlands, in all weathers and at all with insolence, and consider that, as he is seasons of the year, may be read with independent of assistance and cooks for amusement, not unaccompanied with profit, himself, he is therefore no gentleman! This by those who care to know anything of the is doubtless a sad state of things; but matmanner and spirit in which some of our ters become worse when the country people modern landscape painters "go to nature." give their opinions on art subjects. It is It was in the autumn of 1856 that the author currently believed that the painter is landdetermined "to put in execution plans of surveying, or, as they express it in the study whose full development would require north, "mappin;" but he is considered a several years." As a preparatory exercise, very slow hand. He has been wasting a he resolves to encamp on the Boulsworth month over a few square yards of a mounmoors "to study heather." For this pur- tain which could have been surveyed in its pose he contrives a portable wooden hut, entirety in a week by men in the adjacent composed of panels, capable of being carried towns; and as for painting, there are plenty separately and united by iron bolts. On of painters who could paint all the woodeach of the four sides of this hut there is a work of a farmhouse in a fourth of the time window of plate-glass. The wooden floor, that this one has spent on a yard of canraised some inches from the ground, is car- vas! In his solitude, Mr. Hamerton did peted, and the arched roof is covered with not lack for visitors, and occasionally these waterproof canvas. What cooking the au- were by no means welcome. One night he thor has to do is performed by means of was awakened by a loud yell close to the two spirit lamps, and a hammock, which door of his hut, followed by a great deal of can be easily rolled up, and suspended strong language. The author sat up in his against one of the walls of the hut by day, hammock, and grasping his revolver, waited furnishes the sleeping accommodation. Mat- in silent expectation of an attack. But ters being finally arranged, the painter none followed, the gentleman, whoever he camps on a vast moor, on the frontier line might be, contented himself with cursing in of Lancashire and Yorkshire. On the sec- a hearty and vigorous manner until he was ond night there comes a violent storm of tired, and then went grumbling away, leavwind and rain, but the hut, beyond leaking ing the purport and object of his midnight a little, answers admirably, and in a very call forever a matter of mystery. The ocbrief time the author becomes perfectly set- cupant of the hut was apprehensive of a tled down in his new mode of life, though visit from the poachers or "night hunters," he occasionally bewails his inexperience in as they are there called, a set of determined cooking, and deplores the fatal necessity of reckless blackguards, who go in gangs, well washing up" the utensils after a meal. armed and disguised, and commit with imOf course, an individual leading this species punity all sorts of lawless outrages. But of life, and having no occupation that the fortunately the idea of molesting the painter provincial mind can comprehend, must ex- never entered their heads. By daytime vispect to hear some strange rumors concern-itors were so numerous as to cause the wish ing himself. Mr. Hamerton was looked on by suspicious gamekeepers as a poacherthe farmers ask him "what he hawks ?"

66

*A Painter's Camp in the Highlands, and Thoughts about Art. By Phillip Gilbert Hamerton, Author of "The Isles of Loch Awe." 2 vols.

Macmillan and Co. 1862.

that the place was yet more lonely. The hut was the centre of attraction for miles round-an old woman made a pilgrimage of seven miles to get a glimpse of the hermit painter. Lovers made assignations by the hut, and on Sundays it was surrounded