dation. The same prohibition
was found necessary again in 1755, at which time the practice had
grown up of illuminating the College buildings upon Commencement
eve. But the habit of drinking spirituous liquor, and of
furnishing it to friends, on this public occasion, grew up into
more serious evils. In the year 1737, the Trustees, having found
that there was a great expense in spirituous distilled liquors
upon Commencement occasions, ordered that for the future no
candidate for a degree, or other student, should provide or allow
any such liquors to be drunk in his chamber during Commencement
week. And again, it was ordered in 1746, with the view of
preventing several extravagant and expensive customs, that there
should be 'no kind of public treat but on Commencement,
quarter-days, and the day on which the valedictory oration was
pronounced; and on that day the Seniors may provide and give away
a barrel of metheglin, and nothing more.' But the evil continued a
long time. In 1760, it appears that it was usual for the
graduating class to provide a pipe of wine, in the payment of
which each one was forced to join. The Corporation now attempted
by very stringent law to break up this practice; but the Senior
Class having united in bringing large quantities of rum into
College, the Commencement exercises were suspended, and degrees
were withheld until after a public confession of the class. In the
two next years degrees were given at the July examination, with a
view to prevent such disorders, and no public Commencement was
celebrated. Similar scenes are not known to have occurred
afterwards, although for a long time that anniversary wore as much
the aspect of a training-day as of a literary festival.

"The Commencement Day in the modern sense of the term--that is, a
gathering of graduated members and of others drawn together by a
common interest in the College, and in its young members who are
leaving its walls--has no counterpart that I know of in the older
institutions of Europe. It arose by degrees out of the former
exercises upon this occasion, with the addition of such as had
been usual before upon quarter-days, or at the presentation in
July. For a time several of the commencing Masters appeared on the
stage to pronounce orations, as they had done before. In process
of time, when they had nearly ceased to exhibit, this anniversary
began to assume a somewhat new feature; the peculiarity of which
consists in this, that