Arthur (on pony): "Hollo! What have you got on your heads?"
Juvenile Swell: "Why, you see, every snob wears a cap or a wide-awake now; so the men of our school have returned to the old Chimney Pot!"
(As paterfamilias we are sorry to say that we have observed this monstrosity many times this Christmas.)
University Reform
There remain the Universities, the apex of the educational pyramid. The Universities Commission was not appointed till 1872. Its report on the income and property of Oxford and Cambridge was not published till October 1874, and the Universities' Act was not passed till 1877. Punch's contributions to the discussions which arose over University Reform nearly always take the form of hostile criticism of the champions of "no change," and he devotes by far the greater amount of space to the castigation of Oxford conservatives and non-resident reactionaries. The vote on the institution of the non-Collegiate or "unattached" system in 1868 furnished Punch with the materials for a comprehensive indictment of all his pet Oxford aversions. In the wail of the Mediævalists, headed "An Oxford Miserere," Punch ranges himself on the side of the reformers; Sir John, afterwards Lord Coleridge, who had taken an active part in the successful movement for the abolition of religious tests in the Universities; Conington, the distinguished Latinist and editor of Virgil; Raper, the well-known Fellow of Trinity College, who, under more than one President, was the power behind the throne; and Jowett, who with Stanley and Maurice, had always been supported by Punch in his espousal of "modernist" views.
When Mr. Meyrick, an Oxford Don, expressed his satisfaction that our Educational System was not that of the Germans, Punch was unable to echo his complacency, and went so far as to wish that "our Dons and Fellows were but as these Germans"; but it may be pleaded in extenuation of his offence that the doctrine of "Kultur" was less vocal in the 'sixties, and that German professors and teachers were not then so firmly harnessed to the car of "Machtpolitik." Punch little thought that some fifty years later Admiral Tirpitz would admit that the most formidable opponent of Germany was the "polo-playing Englishman." The notion that pastime was overdone finds vent in the "Chant for College Athletes":—
How doth the busy Undergrad
Improve each shining hour,
Loving each new athletic "fad"
To show his muscles' power!