apathy and carelessness. It is our position, if hostilities suddenly broke out, to which we must look, and it is no use to disguise from ourselves the fact that in

such an emergency the means of manning our ships would not be equal to that of our antagonist.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE SCHOOLS.

THERE is no more characteristic spot in Oxford than the quadrangle of the schools. Doubtless in the times when the University held and exercised the privileges of infang-thief and outfangthief, and other such old-world rights, there must have been a place somewhere within the liberties devoted to examinations even more exciting than the great-go. But since alma mater has ceased to take cognizance of "treasons, insurrections, felonies, and mayhem" it is here in that fateful and inexorable quadrangle, and the buildings which surround it, that she exercises her most potent spells over the spirits of her children. I suppose that a man being tried for his life must be more uncomfortable than an undergraduate being examined for his degree, and that to be hung-perhaps even to be pilloried -must be worse than to be plucked. But after all, the feelings in both cases must be essentially the same, only more intense in the former; and an institution which can examine a man (in literis humanioribus, in humanities so called) once a year for two or three days at a time, has nothing to complain of, though it has no longer the power of hanging

nursemaids or children play about it. Nobody lives in it. Only when the examinations are going on you may see a few hooded figures who walk as though conscious of the powers of academic life and death which they wield, and a good deal of shuddering undergraduate life flitting about the placeluckless youths, in white ties and bands, who are undergoing the peine forte et dure with different degrees of composure; and their friends who are there to look after them. You may go in and watch the torture yourself if you are so minded, for the viva voce schools are open to the public. But one such experiment will be enough for you, unless you are very hard-hearted. The sight of the long table, behind which sit Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Co. fullrobed, stern of face, soft of speech, seizing their victim in turn, now letting him run a little way as a cat does a mouse, then drawing him back, with claw of wily question, probing him on this side and that, turning him inside out-the row of victims opposite, pale or flushed, of anxious or careless mien, according to temperament, but one and all on the rack as they bend over the alloted paper, or read from the wellthumbed book-the scarcely-less-to-bepitied row behind, of future victims, "sitting for the schools" as it is called, ruthlessly brought hither by statutes, to watch the sufferings they must hereafter undergo-should fill the friend of suffering humanity with thoughts too deep for tears. Through the long day till four o'clock, or later, the torture lasts. Then the last victim is dismissed; the men who are "sitting for the schools"

fly all ways to their colleges, silently, in search of relief to their over-wrought feelings probably also of beer, the undergraduate's universal specific. The beadles close those ruthless doors for a mysterious half-hour on the examiners. Outside in the quadrangle collect by twos and threes the friends of the victims waiting for the re-opening of the door and the distribution of the "testamurs." The testamurs, lady readers will be pleased to understand, are certificates under the hands of the examiners that your sons, brothers, husbands perhaps, have successfully undergone the torture. But, if husbands, oh, go not yourselves, and send not your sons to wait for the testamur of the head of your house; for Oxford has seldom seen a sight over which she would more willingly draw the veil with averted face than that of the youth rushing wildly, dissolved in tears, from the schools' quadrangle, and shouting, "Mamma! papa's plucked; papa's plucked!"

On the occasion at which we have now arrived, the pass-schools are over already; the paper-work of the candidates for honours has been going on for the last week. Every morning our three St. Ambrose acquaintance have mustered with the rest for the anxious day's work, after such breakfasts as they have been able to eat under the circumstances. They take their work in very different ways. Grey rushes nervously back to his rooms whenever he is out of the schools for ten minutes, to look up dates and dodges. He worries himself sadly over every blunder which he discovers himself to have made, and sits up nearly all night cramming, always hoping for a better to-morrow. Blake keeps up his affected carelessness to the last, quizzing the examiners, laughing over the shots he has been making in the last paper. His shots, it must be said, turn out well for the most part; in the taste paper particularly, as they compare notes, he seems to have almost struck the bull's-eye in his answers to one or two questions which Hardy and Grey have passed over altogether. When he is wide of the mark he passes it off

with some jesting remark "that a fool can ask in five minutes more questions than a wise man can answer in a week," or wish "that the examiners would play fair, and change sides of the table for an hour with the candidates, for a finish." But he, too, though he does it on the sly, is cramming with his coach at every available spare moment. Hardy had finished his reading a full thirty-six hours before the first day of paper-work, and had braced himself for the actual struggle by two good nights' rest and a long day on the river with Tom. He had worked hard from the first, and so had really mastered his books. And now, feeling that he has fairly and honestly done his best, and that if he fails it will be either from bad luck or natural incapacity, and not from his own fault, he manages to keep a cooler head than any of his companions in trouble.

The week's paper-work passes off uneventfully then 'comes the viva voce work for the candidates for honours. They go in, in alphabetical order, four a day, for one more day's work, the hardest of all, and then there is nothing more to do but wait patiently for the class list. On these days there is a good attendance in the inclosed space to which the public are admitted. The front seats are often occupied by the private tutors of the candidates, who are there, like Newmarket trainers, to see the performances of their stables, marking how each colt bears pressing and comports himself when the pinch comes. They watch the examiners too, carefully, to see what line they take, whether science, or history, or scholarship is likely to tell most, that they may handle the rest of their starters accordingly. Behind them, for the most part, on the hindermost benches of the flight of raised steps, anxious younger brothers and friends sit, for a few minutes at a time, flitting in and out in much unrest, and making the objects of their solicitude more nervous than ever by their sympathy.

It is now the afternoon of the second day of the viva voce examinations in

honours. Blake is one of the men in. His tutor, Hardy, Grey, Tom, and other St. Ambrose men, have all been in the schools more or less during his examination, and now Hardy and Tom are waiting outside the doors for the issuing of the testamurs.

The group is small enough. It is so much of course that a class-man should get his testamur that there is no excitement about it; generally the man himself stops to receive it.

The only anxious faces in the group are Tom's and Hardy's. They have not exchanged a word for the last few minutes in their short walk before the door. Now the examiners come out and walk away towards their colleges, and the next minute the door again opens and the clerk of the schools appears with the slips of paper in his hand.

"Now you'll see if I'm not right," said Hardy, as they gathered to the door with the rest. "I tell you there isn't the least chance for him."

The clerk read out the names inscribed on the testamurs which he held, and handed them to the owners.

"Haven't you one for Mr. Blake of St. Ambrose?" said Tom, desperately, as the clerk was closing the door.

"No, sir; none but those I have just given out," answered the clerk shaking his head. The door closed, and they turned away in silence for the first minute.

"I told you how it would be," said Hardy, as they passed out of the south gate into the Ratcliffe Quadrangle.

"But he seemed to be doing so well when I was in."

"You were not there at the time. I thought at first they would have sent him out of the schools at once."

"In his divinity, wasn't it?"

"Yes; he was asked to repeat one of the Articles, and didn't know three words of it. From that moment I saw it was all over. The examiner and he both lost their tempers, and it went from bad to worse, till the examiner remarked that he could have answered one of the questions he was asking when he was

ten years old, and Blake replied, So could he. They gave him a paper in divinity afterwards, but you could see there was no chance for him." "Poor fellow! what will he do, do you think? How will he take it?"

"I can't tell. But I'm afraid it will be a very serious matter for him. He was the ablest man in our year too. What a pity!"

They got into St. Ambrose just as the bell for afternoon chapel was going down, and went in. Blake was there, and one look showed him what had

happened. In fact he had expected nothing else all day since his breakdown in the Articles. Tom couldn't help watching him during chapel, and afterwards, on that evening, acknowledged to a friend that whatever else you might think of Blake, there was no doubt about his gameness.

After chapel he loitered outside the door in the quadrangle, talking just as usual, and before Hall he loitered on the steps in well-feigned carelessness. Everybody else was thinking of his breakdown; some with real sorrow and sympathy; others as of any other ninedays' wonder-pretty much as if the favourite for the Derby had broken down; others with ill-concealed triumph, for Blake had many enemies amongst the men. He himself was conscious enough of what they were thinking of, but maintained his easy gay manner through it all, though the effort it cost him was tremendous. The only allusion he made to what had happened which Tom heard was when he asked him to wine.

"Are you engaged to-night, Brown?" he said. Tom answered in the negative. "Come to me, then," he went on. "You won't get another chance in St. Ambrose. I have a few bottles of old wine left; we may as well floor them: they won't bear moving to a Hall with their master."

And then he turned to some other men and asked them, everyone in fact whom he came across, especially the dominant fast set with whom he had chiefly lived. These young gentlemen

(of whom we had a glimpse at the outset, but whose company we have carefully avoided ever since, seeing that their sayings and doings were of a kind of which the less said the better) had been steadily going on in their way, getting more and more idle, reckless, and insolent. Their doings had been already so scandalous on several occasions as to call for solemn meetings of the college authorities; but, no vigorous measures having followed, such deliberations had only made matters worse, and given the men a notion that they could do what they pleased with impunity. This night the climax had come; it was as though the flood of misrule had at last broken banks and overflowed the whole college.

For two hours the wine party in Blake's large ground-floor rooms was kept up with a wild reckless mirth, in keeping with the host's temper. Blake was on his mettle. He had asked every man with whom he had a speaking acquaintance, as if he wished to face out his disaster at once to the whole world. Many of the men came feeling uncomfortable, and would sooner have stayed away and treated the pluck as a real misfortune. But after all Blake was the best judge of how he liked it to be treated, and, if he had a fancy for giving a great wine on the occasion, the civilest thing to do was to go to it. And so they went, and wondered as much as he could desire at the brilliant coolness of their host, speculating and doubting nevertheless in their own secret hearts whether it wasn't acting after all. Acting it was, no doubt, and not worth the doing; no acting is. But one must make allowances. No two men take a thing just alike, and very few can sit down quietly when they have lost a fall in life's wrestle, and say, "Well, here I am, beaten no doubt this time. By my own fault too. Now, take a good look at me, my good friends, as I know you all want to do, and say your say out, for I mean getting up again directly and having another turn at it."

Blake drank freely himself, and urged his guests to drink, which was a super

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fluous courtesy for the most part. Many of the men left his rooms considerably excited. They had dispersed for an hour or so to billiards, or a stroll in the town, and at ten o'clock reassembled at supper parties, of which there were several in college this evening, especially a monster one at Chanter's roomsa champagne supper," as he had carefully and ostentatiously announced on the cards of invitation. This flaunting the champagne in their faces had been resented by Drysdale and others, who drank his champagne in tumblers, and then abused it and clamoured for beer in the middle of the supper. Chanter, whose prodigality in some ways was only exceeded by his general meanness, had lost his temper at this demand, and insisted that, if they wanted beer, they might send for it themselves, for he wouldn't pay for it. This protest was treated with uproarious contempt, and gallons of ale soon made their appearance in college jugs and tankards. The tables were cleared, and songs (most of them of more than doubtful character), cigars, and all sorts of compounded drinks, from claret cup to egg flip, succeeded. The company, recruited constantly as men came into college, was getting more and more excited every minute. The scouts cleared away and carried off all relics of the supper, and then left; still the revel went on, till, by midnight, the men were ripe for any mischief or folly which those among them who retained any brains at all could suggest. The signal for breaking up was given by the host's falling from his seat. Some of the men rose with a shout to put him to bed, which they accomplished with difficulty, after dropping him several times, and left him to snore off the effects of his debauch with one of his boots on. Others took to doing what mischief occurred to them in his rooms. One man, mounted on a chair with a cigar in his mouth which had gone out, was employed in pouring the contents of a champagne bottle with unsteady hand into the clock on the mantel-piece. Chanter was a particular man in this sort of furniture, and his