"In Cambridge," says the author of the Collegian's Guide, "the halls stand on the same footing as the colleges, but at Oxford they did not, in my time, hold by any means so high a place in general estimation. Certainly those halls which admit the outcasts of other colleges, and of those alone I am now speaking, used to be precisely what one would expect to find them; indeed, I had rather that a son of mine should forego a university education altogether, than that he should have so sorry a counterfeit of academic advantages as one of these halls affords."—p. 172.
"All the Colleges at Cambridge," says Bristed, "have equal privileges and rights, with the solitary exception of King's, and though some of them are called Halls, the difference is merely one of name. But the Halls at Oxford, of which there are five, are not incorporated bodies, and have no vote in University matters, indeed are but a sort of boarding-houses at which students may remain until it is time for them to take a degree. I dined at one of those establishments; it was very like an officers' mess. The men had their own wine, and did not wear their gowns, and the only Don belonging to the Hall was not present at table. There was a tradition of a chapel belonging to the concern, but no one present knew where it was. This Hall seemed to be a small Botany Bay of both Universities, its members made up of all sorts of incapables and incorrigibles."—Five Years in an Eng. Univ., Ed. 2d, pp. 140, 141.
3. At Cambridge and Oxford, the public eating-room.
I went into the public "hall" [so is called in Oxford the public eating-room].—De Quincey's Life and Manners, p. 231.
Dinner is, in all colleges, a public meal, taken in the refectory or "hall" of the society.—Ibid., p. 273.
4. At the University of Cambridge, Eng., dinner, the name of the place where the meal is taken being given to the meal itself.
Hall lasts about three quarters of an hour.—Bristed's Five Year in an Eng. Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 20.
After Hall is emphatically lounging-time, it being the wise practice of Englishmen to attempt no hard exercise, physical or mental, immediately after a hearty meal.—Ibid., p. 21.
It is not safe to read after Hall (i.e. after dinner).—Ibid., p. 331.
HANG-OUT. An entertainment.