of letters, one would have thought there would have been no distinctions but those which are won by talent and scholarship. But a single day in the University is enough to show that the republic of letters is all a sham. A republic, indeed! It is the most arrant despotism ever known, and the two tyrants who hold sway are money and rank. Oh, the toadyism and money-worship that are rampant there! Why, the Universities have the proud distinction of having given birth to a peculiar type of toady-the "tufthunter." Who that has seen the obsequious and painfully polite college tutor take the arm of the young nobleman or fellow-commoner in the "quad," in full sight of all the men coming from lecture, will ever be at a loss where to look for the most perfect specimen of that peculiarly scholastic type of the genus toady, the tuft-hunter? Is it worthy of such great educational institutions that wealth should have its distinctive badge in the fellow-commoner, and poverty its distinctive badge in the sizar? Wealth has quite enough influence and power without giving it special academical privileges, and poverty is quite heavily enough weighted in the race without further handicapping it by fastening upon the poor man the stigma of an opprobrious name, and marking him off from the rest by a line of separation which makes him practically a social pariah. ficials themselves are the high priests, which is at the root of the abuses which I treated of in my last article. When money is the gauge of every man's worth, and when most men are eager to be esteemed and honoured even on that basis of honour and esteem, it is only natural that they should try, at any rate, to keep up the appearance of wealth, and avail themselves of the means to carry out the deception which lie so temptingly ready to their hand in the system of credit. The University dons would suggest this emendation of Pope's line, though in one sense the original reading might still hold good: "Wealth makes the man, the want of it the fellow." It is a recognised fact there that money gives a man a dignity and standing which no moral or intellectual attainments can confer; and Alma Mater offers a premium to rich young idlers to come up and squander a portion of their ample fortune in what is facetiously termed a University education. And these young Croesuses set the fashion of luxury and extravagance, which the other undergraduates, in deference to the etiquette of the place, deem it incumbent upon them to follow, no matter into what depths of debt it may lead them. Oh, Alma Mater - you call yourself a mother of arts and learning! You talk of fostering and cherishing, of guarding But, after all, it is but waste of energy to and guiding your beloved alumni - of be indignant with Alma Mater on this score. watching over their welfare, and turning All the indignation in the world will never them out useful members of society! Bah! shame her out of her toadyism and money- who listens to your twaddle? Why, do worship. They are ingrained in her now, you know what you are like? You are I expect, and can never be extracted. But like a fat old cicerone, whose duty it is to it is worth while considering whether these show visitors over some historic old building, external signs of the worship of wealth may and prose away drearily by the hour-the not have had a great deal to do with the abomination of abominations to intelligent growth of that system of credit, and that travellers, who don't want her guidance, general disposition towards extravagance, and won't have it; so they just slip half a which are such glaring features of Univer- crown into her receptive palm, and tell her sity social life. they will dispense with her services, and be their own guides. She, with a little attempt at bridling-up, and a faint show of standing upon her dignity, finally stows the half-crown away, and, with a reproachful shake of the head at the departing figures of the wilful travellers, sits down resigned. So you sit there in your seat of learning, and we just push our "tips" into your open palm; and you, after an imbecile effort to assert your maternal authority, sit down resigned, with the virtuous reso That noblemen should wear a distinctive garb may, perhaps, be right enough-if they are regarded as hereditary pillars of the constitution; but that any rich nobody, by merely paying double fees, should be entitled to bedizen himself in gold or silver lace, and enjoy immunities and privileges which are denied to the poorer sons of Alma Mater, is carrying money-worship a little too far. Indeed it is, I am convinced, this open worship of money, of which the University of lution of demanding a larger "tip" from us next time. You are paid, and that is enough for you, and that is all you care for, as you drop the coins into your purse, and leer out of your rheumy old eyes! Bah! you are an old humbug, and we are sick of you. Whilst I am on the subject of money, let me just endeavour to give outsiders a general idea of the ordinary cost of a University education. If you consult the Cambridge Calendar, you will find this table of average It is added, "Personal expenses and tradesmen's bills are independent of the place,” a vague statement, upon which I leave the reader to place his own construction. When or by whom this absurd table was calculated I cannot tell, nor do I know why it appears year after year in the Calendar, unless to entrap unwary parents into sending up their sons, in the belief that £100 a year will amply suffice to cover the expenses of their University career. It is enough to say that the table is no guide whatever to University ex penses. Unless a scholarship or sizarship be obtained at one of the colleges, Paterfamilias must make up his mind to pay £200 a year for his son's expenses at collegei.e., £200 for the twenty-five weeks which form the academic year; in other words, an allowance of £8 a week. Pretty fair for a young fellow of eighteen, I think. Yet it is almost impossible to keep the expenses within that sum under the present system of University charges. And, indeed, the father who starts his son with an allowance of £200 may consider himself fortunate if, when the degree is at last gained, he finds that £1,000 has covered the three and a half years' expenditure. The father who reckons his expenditure under that sum runs a very good chance of finding himself grievously disappointed. Now, £8 a week seems a very liberal allowance for a boy who has just left school. I am taking, remember, the ordinary undergraduate now: there are those whose parents allow them double and treble that sum-with them I am not concerned at present. £200 a year, or £8 a week, is recognized as the most common allowance. This, as I say, seems liberal enough; but then there are certain luxuries which the etiquette of the "Varsity" requires every "man" to indulge in. For example, wine-which most of the undergraduates have never been accustomed to at home, and which they will certainly not be able to afford after they leave the University is considered a necessary part of an undergraduate's ménage. Why it should be so considered, I cannot say; it is a ridiculous and stupid custom, it seems to me, and leads directly to extravagance. The humble beer and glass of toddy to which he will have to confine himself after he leaves college are surely quite enough to whet his whistle, and the whistles of his thirsty comrades, while he is up there. But, granting that wine is indispensable, the wisest plan would surely be for parents themselves to supply their sons with what they consider a sufficient amount, and not allow them to run up enormous bills with University wine merchants. Luxurious living is traditional among undergraduates, and they find it very difficult afterwards to descend to the plain fare which must, for many a long year, take the place of those divine symposia, those ambrosial feasts. It is time enough for men to become gourmands when all other sources of pleasure fail them when joints are stiff, and more active enjoyment is denied them; and to encourage young men to be epicures is hardly a legitimate branch of University education. A little more simplicity in this respect would make a wonderful difference in the total of a college bill, and considerably lighten the load of expense which falls on the shoulders of that poor, patient beast of burden, Paterfamilias. In looking over past records of University life, I find that much the same abuses have existed up there for the last 150 years; and it is amusing to note what desperate but unavailing efforts have been made to correct extravagance and laxity of morals by stringent sumptuary laws. It would appal the boldest undergraduate to go through the statute book, and see what terrible penalties have been enacted, and, being unrepealed, are still in force, to suppress even his most trifling peccadilloes. Writing of the University in the year 1717, Mr. Edward Miller, serjeant-at-law, says sarcastically that "the University would be very thin if all the statutes de modestia et morum urbanitate were put in force." Even in his time the old laws had fallen into disuse, and were practically obsolete; and I note that he mentions, as a special hardship resulting from the general disregard of old statutes, the weary while the tradesmen were kept waiting both for money and justice when they had any claims upon the University for either. "One sturdy townsman," he says, "sued a master of arts and a considerable tutor for a pair of boots and a pair of shoes; and though he prosecuted his action with all vigour, it was about seven years before it came to a sentence, which was at last in favour of the townsman -great intercession and application being often used in the meantime to several vicechancellors and their deputies." Well, the tradesmen are having their innings now, and I think they get justice a little too quickly from the modern county court. It is not uncommon for a debtor to receive the first intelligence that his creditor has sued him, from a judgment summons informing him that judgment has gone against him by default, and that he is saddled with all the costs of the action. For little trouble is taken in serving a county court summons. It is left at an address where, perhaps, the debtor has not been residing for months before; and, as I have said, the first intimation of the action he receives is the judgment summons, which must be served upon him personally. It would be well if the judges of the Oxford and Cambridge county courts would in quire a little more closely into the proofs of "service" in the case of summonses taken out against non-resident graduates. They are redolent of intolerance, those old sumptuary laws, and of course they failed as all such harsh and mistaken measures must fail-to remedy the abuses at which they were aimed. It would be a treat, I think, to see the faces of those highly moral gentlemen who framed the statutes prohibiting "daily frequenting of the market and all loitering in the streets," on pain of a fine of five shillings, if they could but be brought back to life just for an hour, to have one look at the " High," or King's Parade! It would be rich, too, to transport the framers of that other statute— which enacts that no scholar shall play at quoits, sword-playing, fencing, dancing, or any such boisterous games-from the nether shades to witness the Boat Race or the athletic sports. How they would stare aghast at the indecorous vagaries of those ancient seats of learning, for which they had done their best to prescribe rules of modesty and decorum! There are fanatics who still believe in the efficacy of sumptuary laws, and would, if they had their way, establish in the University a detestable system of espionage and a hateful ecclesiastical police with inquisitorial powers. A very cursory study of history might teach them the folly of such high-handed measures to reform abuses. They would only scotch the snake, not kill it. And the reaction, which must inevitably follow, would make matters ten times worse than before. But while I view with strong disfavour all such attempts to make men virtuous by Act of Parliament, I think there is one obvious check to extravagance and idleness at the University which might be advantageously adopted; and that is, by raising the standard of admission, making an entrance examination compulsory at all colleges; and, further, making that examination a pretty stiff oneas stiff, say, as the present "Little Go," which is not a very formidable test of a man's abilities, after all. This would effectually exclude those rich idlers who have done so much to corrupt University society. Let a University career be the reward of at least a little previous industry and perseverance in study. The preparation for admission will necessitate, at any rate, some habits of work beforehand; and these, we may depend upon it, will not die away all at once. At present, there is no bar to the admission of the idlest and most ignorant blockhead in the world. Many colleges have no entrance examination at all; and I remember that, at my own college, the matriculation examina tion was a mere farce-a boy of twelve years of age could have passed it with ease; yet there were always several men plucked. They had, however, two more trials allowed them at intervals of a fortnight, each trial easier than its predecessor, so loath were the tutors to lose even such discreditable pupils. The veriest dunce had to them a definite monetary value; and, if he represented nothing else, represented at any rate £18 a year. I am sure that the whole tone of the University would be raised if the examination for admission were made a real test of average knowledge. For the men who would thus be excluded are, as a rule, utterly worthless from every point of view. They contribute nothing either to the intellectual or athletic honour of the University; they merely set an example of lavish and reckless expenditure, which it would be the greatest blessing in the world to the University to be without. Now that a new and better race of dons has arisen-now that the selfish, indolent, easy-going, self-indulgent old gentleman, who ambled through life like his own sleek cob, has given place to the earnest, thoughtful, liberal - minded man of energy and honesty, we have a right to expect some wise reforms something conceived in a better and more liberal spirit than those Puritanical old sumptuary laws. Apropos of those old laws, before I close I may thank my stars that they are obsolete, for among them is one which provides dire pains and penalties against whomsoever shall dare to reveal the secrets of the University to outsiders! Perhaps I should not have been so outspoken had I been liable, for such an offence as I have been committing, to be "suspended and excluded from the master's degree, and all benefits and honours of the said University," until I should have "deserved to obtain favour from the said University—or, at least, from the more numerous and discreet part of the University of regents." I am afraid I should have received scant mercy from those worthy gentlemen, and should hardly have regained their favour on this side the grave. To those who are wearied by the constant repetition of the title which heads this article, it will be a relief to know that my case is nearly finished. I have only to touch upon one more point-female society at the University-which will occupy my next and concluding paper, and then the eyes of readers of Once a Week will no longer be pained by what Falstaff would call the "damnable iteration" of "A Case against Alma Mater." MUSIC OF THE FUTURE. THE IN TWO PARTS.-L. HE fact that the managers of our two opera houses do not intend to give representations of Wagner's works on a scale as liberal and complete as that on which the operas of Mozart, Meyerbeer, and other writers of the grand opera are put upon the stage would not surprise us. But as the musical public particularly desire to hear "Tannhäuser" and "Lohengrin" at Covent Garden or Drury Lane, it is strange that neither Mr. Mapleson nor Mr. Gye seems likely to consult their wishes. Mr. Edward Dannreuther has worked with the greatest zeal of any amateur of music to get Wagner a hearing in this country; and his paper on this subject, recently read at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, with some slight curtailment, we publish, as the interest felt in this subject quite warrants our doing so. It is near upon five and twenty years since Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt accomplished some of their most important revolutionary deeds in the realms of instrumental and dramatic music, and the time has come when musical theorists are following in the wake of the great innovators, and are exerting themselves to give a systematic account of their doings. Before attempting to give an insight into the many conflicting theories, opinions, and absurdities that have crystallized around that great bugbear, "The Music of the Future," it will be well to afford a slight notion of the state of musical matters antecedent to Wagner and Liszt's revolt. It will be best to do this from two sides: The side of pure instrumental music, which has been far the most prominent in Germany-that is to say, in the entire musical world worth speaking of-since the middle of the last century; and secondly, from the side of music in connection with the drama, that is to say, operatic music generally. Since the days of Bach and Handel, the progress of musical art has lain almost exclusively within the domains of purely instrumental music. It is true that our great masters have produced an enormous amount of matter for human voices, both with and without accompaniment; and it is not less true that the art, even the purely instrumental part of it, has received an immense impulse through its connection with the stage. Still the achievements of the great instrumental school, from Bach and his sons, through Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, to Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Schumann, constitute the genuine triumphs of the art, without fear of injuring Rossini, and all his friends who have devoted their talents to the manufacture of tunes for Italian and French singing birds. If we follow the course of the development of instrumental music from Haydn to Beethoven, we perceive a gradual development of form; from a regular production for the market, to the achievement of a lofty ideal, upon which none but purely artistic considerations are allowed to have any influence. In Haydn's earlier days, the greater number of Austrian, Bohemian, and Hungarian noblemen kept their private bands. A similar custom has obtained in Russia up to the recent emancipation of serfs, and may be still in vogue here and there. Those who were unable to support a complete band, kept at least a string quartette, or a couple of wind instrument players. Paterfamilias played the violin, or the flute, or the violoncello together with his retainers, and accompanied his daughters playing on the cembalo. their increased professional skill-of their safe and sure mastery over all technical difficulties-that composers such as Mozart, animated with a desire to fly at higher game, could venture to give bolder expression to their musical dreams. At last Beethoven was enabled to clear the entire domains of dilettantism at a bound, and to escape the stifling atmosphere of amateur tastes and wishes. From the beginning of Beethoven's second periodfrom the Sinfonia Eroica, or the Waldstein Sonata, or the Rasoumouffsky quartetteswe may date the decay and death of dilettantism. These works are absolutely beyond the reach of players who cannot devote an entire life to their instruments, and they form of necessity the centre of that great circle round which the whole musical world of our day gyrates. With Beethoven, instrumental music rises to a perfectly ideal sphere. He has got rid of all and every conventionality of form and diction. He makes every technical detail subservient to the expression of his poetical idea. He gives himself no trouble as regards difficulties of execution, provided there are no technical impossibilities. He finishes his work as best he can, without consulting the desires or tastes of his executants, or even of his audience. The outlines of musical form, such as they have been bequeathed to him by his predecessors, he cannot be said to have either obliterated or strained. He expanded them, and turned them to account for the expression of intense emotions. Every work is a distinct individual, whose connection with the spe It was for this sort of amateur gatherings that composers produced the incredible mass of chamber music, which astonishes the student. It is to these réunions of dilettanti that the enormous number of duets, trios, quartettes, for string and wind instruments, the endless sets of variations for the piano-cies may be and is traceable, though at first forte, the serenades, cassaziones, suites for small bands, &c., resembling one another like eggs in a basket, owe their origin. The composers furnished what their patrons could play easily; and thus a conventional form and style for compositions of this character was. easily developed, and soon carried to a state of relative perfection. But the very great diffusion of this class of music, and the ever-increasing demand for it, brought into play an element which, though it carried with it the germs of degeneracy, yet saved the conventional forms of chamber music from entire stagnation-I mean the virtuose element. A number of professed players, travelling virtuosi, made their influence felt from one end of Europe to the other; and it was in consequence of sight it appears to be infinitely removed from the parent stock. The gist of the whole matter lies in the fact that since Beethoven, it has been the desire of all thinking and aspiring musicians to construct their music upon a poetical basis. Now, the tendency towards the expression of some definite poetical idea by musical means is the characteristic of all so-called "Music of the Future," and such a tendency has made itself felt more and more clearly in the works of Beethoven's successors: Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner. The unlimited powers of the art for emotional expression, and for this only, are being more and more universally recognized; and we are every day moving farther from the old standpoint of |