Never you mind, my dear (turning to Alice): have a good heart: we shall be the best of friends I am sure we shall; only, you do whatever I tell you, and keep out of those false Oxford gents' everlasting wheedling ways.'

In this last caution, Mrs. Winter's eye for business proved rather a check on the heartiness of her expression: for, every one who kept a wayside inn within an easy drive of Oxford, knew full well that the fame of a pretty barmaid was almost a fortune to any house. Certainly Mrs. Winter was too good a woman to throw a young girl into danger's way: still, as she said, "business is business," and the good looks of her helper and companion, no doubt were anything but a disqualification; and Alice had soon the comfort of feeling that she had made no unfavourable impression, but would commence her new duties with a mistress very kindly disposed, and already prepossessed in her favour.

CHAPTER XVI.

WAYS DELIGHTFUL BUT DANGEROUS.

Ir there is any time in a man's life when he is romantic, sentimental, and likely to do a foolish thing, involving, as Milton says,

"Innumerable

Disturbances on earth through female snares,
And straight conjunction with this sex,"

it is just about the time that is usually spent at Oxford; and it happens most fortunately, that there, all conspires to counteract this "softening of the brain," by calling into action the manly energies and not least by removing the fair enchanters far away. This is more especially true of Oxford; for, at Cambridge the town is not so completely merged in the University: but at Oxford there is, or used to be, but the smallest sprinkling of the ladies we can conceive practicable-exceptions there must be, of course.

VOL. I.

Q

We do know one elderly gentleman who ventured to take up to Oxford a very beautiful young lady; but no doubt she was rarely seen but in one of those nunneries yclept "the private gardens," which, in one or two instances, remain under privileged lock and key.

Almost all the ladies who, in the whole term of a three-years' residence at Oxford, ever met our eye, appeared as strange, and as much out of their proper element at Oxford, as an old College Don seems in the country. It quite took you by surprise, and made you stare, to meet a lady: and you could hardly get over a certain contraband sensation, or be reconciled to the correctness of their being where they were. And when the friend you were walking with did nudge you, and say, "Here they are, Mr. and Mrs. President"—or, “Mr. and Mrs. Principal"-for such were their usual designations- they did not give you the idea of man and wife, or inspire the slightest connubial sentiment; it was more like a kind of statutable arrangement. And as to female attractions, to mere boys as we were, a woman at all on the other side of thirty seemed shelved and superannuated.

The College Fellows, we know, were bound down in heavy penalties not to marry till their

LADIES IN DISPENSABLE.

227

fellowships had led to livings-very cruel and tantalising! —like putting away the toy till the child is too old to care so much about it. So they could not have had much sympathy with these tantalising instances of conjugal monopolyabout twenty married ladies in a society of about some hundreds of would-be married men !

But the value of ladies, in a moral and a humanising point of view, is best learnt by the absence of them. Throw men together as bachelors in London chambers, or men in barracks, and they degenerate very fast. Without the presence of woman, we cannot talk of having a home or fireside. Hence, smoking, billiards, and heartless excitement, to kill time in divers ways, become too often the rule of a reckless and ill-spent life. At Oxford, the family circle and domestic life are lost sight of for shorter periods: and happily so many a wild and dissipated character has appeared to us visibly softened and checked in his downward course when first he returned from home-yes, from homeafter the long vacation.

Now the truth must be told, for the honour of the ladies, that no sooner does the Commemoration and the usual gathering of mothers, sisters, and ladies fair appear, than everything else gives place to the thrilling sentiments

that the very sight of parasols, muslin, and pretty feet, electrically inspire. To be invited to a breakfast or luncheon with ladies in College-rooms is a compliment indeed; and as to the drive to Woodstock, or the boating picnic down to Newnham, arranged to fall in with the racing eight-oars on our return, these are treats for which the very Cricket-grounds are deserted.

All this we sketch as a mere reminder to old Oxonians of pleasures past, and also as a proof that sentimental feelings do exist, though under high pressure, ready to find vent on the slightest provocation. Shall we confess the fact, that Ned Walford was only one of many scores who were always ready to drive a dozen miles, with no better object than to order luncheon as a pretext for chatting with a pretty girl, and to drive the same dozen miles back to College?

And

Woodstock, of course, is one of the common resorts of riding and of driving men. when there every idle man, whether he knows a Teniers from a Titian or not, is led a kind of pace that enables his eye to rest on nothing in particular, through all the rooms of Blenheim; and hears the old monotonous lecture from the housekeeper about the Duke of Marlborough and his white dog that followed him