g the
University and the country. I could do no more than answer the
questions addressed to me by the Commissioners and by my friends, and
this is really all the share I had at that time in the reform of the
University, or what was called Germanizing the English Universities.
At one time such was the unpopularity of these reformers in the
University itself that one of them asked one of the junior professors
to invite him to dinner, because the Heads of Houses would no longer
admit him to their hospitable boards.

Certainly to have been a member of the much abused Hebdomadal Board,
and a Head of a College in those pre-reform days must have been a
delightful life. Before the days of agricultural distress the income
of the colleges was abundant; the authority of the Heads was
unquestioned in their own colleges; not only undergraduates, but
Fellows also had to be submissive. No junior Fellow would then have
dared to oppose his Head at college meetings. If there was by chance
an obstreperous junior, he was easily silenced or requested to retire.
The days had not yet come when a Master of Trinity ventured to remark
that even a junior Fellow might possibly be mistaken. Colleges seemed
to be the property of the Heads, and in some of them the Fellows were
really chosen by them, and the rest of the Fellows after some kind of
examination. The management of University affairs was likewise
entirely in the hands of the Heads of Colleges, and it was on rare
occasions only that a theological question stirred the interest of
non-resident M.A.s, and brought them to Oxford to record their vote
for or against the constituted authorities. Men like the Dean of
Christ Church, Dr. Gaisford, the Warden of Wadham, Dr. Parsons, and
the Provost of Oriel, Dr. Hawkins, were in their dominions supreme,
till the rebellious spirit began to show itself in such men as Dr.
Jeune, Professor Baden-Powell, A. P. Stanley, Goldwin Smith and
others.

Nor were there many very flagrant abuses under the old regime. It was
rather the want of life that was complained of. It began to be felt
that Oxford should take its place as an equal by the side of foreign
Universities, not only as a high school, but as a home of what then
was called for the first time "original research." There can be no
question that as a teaching body, as a high school at the head of all
the public schools in England, Oxford did its duty nobly. A man who at
that time could take a Double Firs