hink, therefore,
that the authorities put a stop to these expensive lounges, and even
punish them '_pro arbitrio Vice-Cancellarii, vel Procuratorum_.' But I
cannot help thinking, _Mr. Punch_, how greatly painters must draw on
their own imaginations, when they represent the High Street of Oxford as
always enlivened by several of these condemned groups: clearly an
artistic license, as the authorities would have immediately dispersed
them, in accordance with their Statute.

"The next Statute that says nobody must frequent the houses of the
townspeople and the workshops of artificers, without reasonable cause, I
pass over with the simple remark, that it would have been better to have
avoided the gratuitous insult that places respectable houses in the same
clause with others that are both shameless and nameless; and I come to
the next Statute, which says that Nobody shall frequent the taverns,
wine-shops, or places within the city and University precincts, where
wine, or any other liquor, or the herb Nicotiana or 'Tobacco,' is
commonly sold. ('_Cauponis, AEnopoliis ac domibus_ * * * _in quibus
vinum, aut quivis alius potus, aut herba Nicotiana sive_ Tobacco,
_ordinarie venditur, abstineant_), and that the townspeople who admit
the students to such houses shall be heavily fined, or punished with
loss of custom for a certain time.

[Illustration: NOBODY SHALL FREQUENT WHERE THE HERB NICOTIANA IS SOLD.]

"Bless me, _Mr. Punch_! to think that I have smoked tobacco all my life,
and called it by its wrong name! But, as SAM SLICK observes of the
Frenchman, 'Blow'd if he didn't call a hat a shappo! This comes of his
not speaking English!' so, I suppose, I fell into the mistake of calling
the herb Nicotiana by its vulgar name of Tobacco, from not having had
the advantage of an Oxford education. The Statute speaks for itself. It
entirely sets at rest those absurd reports that we hear and read of the
great consumption in Oxford of wines and spirituous liquors, pale ale,
and the herb Nicotiana; and when my neighbour's son, BELLINGHAM GREY, of
Christchurch, has the politeness to offer me a 'weed' (he does not call
it a 'herb,' I observe, so I suppose the plant has degenerated,) which
he says he purchased at CASTLE'S, or some other great stronghold for
Oxford smokers; and when he further entertains me with accounts of snug
little undergraduate dinners at the Star, or Mitre, and how from the
effects of an injudicious mixture of liquors t