Added to the personal comforts are the artistic and scholastic comforts—if one may speak of them as such—with which the student is surrounded. The natural beauties of Oxford’s environment are a fit setting for the classic treasures of architecture which have risen in irregular grouping throughout the mediaeval town. As the student comes and goes, as he sits at his lecture, he is, consciously or unconsciously, living in an atmosphere of artistic realities. And then again, one cannot but remember now and then that he is sitting on the same benches or writing at the same table where once sat or wrote many of the men whose lives or whose works he is set to study, and whose portraits now stare down upon him from the walls opposite or whose coats of arms are blazoned on the oak panelling around him. Then as for books and libraries and reading-rooms—whether one wishes to dig among ancient texts or manuscripts, to consult reference libraries, or to fill one’s own shelves with books old and new, where can Oxford be surpassed?
Cosmopolitanism.
As a cosmopolitan intellectual centre Oxford is a Mecca to which pilgrims flock from all parts of the world; pilgrims with brains, pilgrims without brains; those who want to learn and those who do not want to learn; bookworms, athletes, soldiers, ‘sports,’ workers and idlers; sons of noblemen, sons of commoners; not Englishmen alone, but Indians, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Egyptians, Germans, and Frenchmen. All this variety of student units go about looking very much alike in the conventional ‘lounge’ garb of Oxford; so that only an intimate acquaintance reveals the true cosmopolitanism of its personnel and of its intellectual life.
The ‘College’.
Although the University encircles, and, in constitutional and jurisdictional matters, exercises authority over the Colleges, it is really only the sum of the Colleges, each of which is in turn only the sum of its members. While the University is thus only a union of the Colleges for attaining such ends and such status as can better be attained by united than by isolated existence, the College is a real and concrete thing, the foundation stone of the ‘Oxford System’. Each College is within itself independent; each has its own traditions and some characteristics of organization, life, and system which are peculiar to itself. With the affairs of the College individually the University is not concerned.
The Colleges as they exist to-day suggest some features of the monastery, some of the ancient hostelry, some of the fashionable hotel, some of the College dormitory, and some of the bachelor’s club—they combine church, lecture-rooms, dining-halls, professors’ houses, College clubs and students’ apartments, all within the radius of College walls, all accessible only through College gates, all capable of being shut off from the outside world, at once castle and prison.
To the University there come each year about 900 new men: there are in residence about 2,800; of these each College has from 40 to 300. During his first and second year the student is generally required to live in College, while in his third he may (except in a few instances) and often must go out into ‘digs’, that is, into ‘licensed lodgings’ in the town.
The life of the College is real Oxford life. It was this which Cecil Rhodes cherished most in his reverence for his University; it was this which gave him his confidence in the ‘Oxford System’.
As with individuals so with these Colleges—the longer one’s acquaintance, the better one realizes that each College is independent, has its individuality, its own traditions, and its own personal character. This makes College life again a difficult subject upon which to generalize. Certain technical characteristics, however, are common to all. The College buildings are arranged in quadrangles, in each of which are several ‘stairs’. On each stair are a number of suites of rooms, eight suites being perhaps the average. There are no corridors, so that each stair is as it were a house by itself. Each student has rooms to himself, a ‘sitter’, which serves as living and dining room, and a ‘bedder’ always; while often a ‘thirder’ adds the convenience of a separate study-room. Each suite has also a small cupboard-pantry, and there is usually on each stair a ‘scout’s pantry’ (or kitchen). Each stair has a ‘scout’ and one or two ‘scout’s boys’, who are servants-in-general to all the men on the stair.
The system of breakfasting, lunching, and entertaining in one’s rooms makes the undergraduate at once a host and a householder. When at rare intervals a student wishes to be left alone with his books or his thoughts he may ‘sport his oak’, that is, he may slam the heavy oaken outer door, well known to readers of Tom Brown, whose inside spring-lock bars entrance even to friends who may be familiar enough to ignore the suggestion of its closing. The great elasticity of the tutoring and examination system further makes it possible for the undergraduate to study or not as he may choose, and to dispose of his time practically at his own sweet will. In these respects the Oxford student enjoys an independence which is almost unknown elsewhere—excepting in some of the German Universities.