down from the
gibbet on which it had been hanging for three years, and accorded a
solemn funeral. Four Capitouls bore the pall, and all fathers of
families were required to walk in the procession. When they came to the
Schools, the citizens solemnly begged pardon of the University, and the
cortege was joined by 3000 scholars. Finally, it cost the city 15,000
livres tournois or more to regain their civic privileges.[3]

The late Mr Cecil Rhodes once summarized all Fellows of Colleges as
children in matters of finance. Be that as it may, you will find nothing
more constant in history than the talent of the Universities for
extracting money or money's worth out of a riot. Time (I speak as a
parent) has scarcely blunted that faculty; and still--since where young
men congregate, noise there must be--our Universities like Wordsworth's
Happy Warrior

turn their necessity to glorious gain.

These were the excesses of young 'bloods,' and their servants: but with
them mingled scholars not less ferocious in their habits because almost
desperately poor. You all know, I dare say, that very poor scholars would
be granted licences to beg by the Chancellor. The sleeve of this gown in
which I address you represents the purse or pocket of a Master of Arts,
and may hint to you by its amplitude how many crusts he was prepared to
receive from the charitable.

Now, choosing to ignore (because it has been challenged as overpainted) a
picture of penury endured by the scholars of St John's College in this
University, let me tell you two stories, one well attested, the other
fiction if you will, but both agreeable as testifying to the spirit of
youth which, ever blowing upon their sacred embers, has kept Oxford and
Cambridge perennially alive.

My first is of three scholars so poor that they possessed but one 'cappa'
and gown between them. They took it in turns therefore, and when one went
to lecture the other two kept to their lodgings. I invite you even to
reflect on the joy of the lucky one, in a winter lecture room, dark, with
unglazed windows, as he listened and shuffled his feet for warmth in the
straw of the floor. [No one, by the way, can understand the incessant
harping of our early poets upon May-time and the return of summer until
he has pictured to himself the dark and cold discomfort of a
Middle-English winter.] These three poor scholars fed habitually on
bread, with soup and a little wine, tasting meat only o