Now a merchant may wear what boots he pleases, and has pretty nearly acquired the privilege of buying and selling without the Government laying its paws upon the bargain. The stake for heretics is gone; the pillory is taken down; Bishops are even found lifting up their voices against the remains of persecution, and ready to do away with the last Catholic Disabilities. Sir Robert Peel, though he wished it ever so much, has no power over Mr. Benjamin Disraeli's grinders, or any means of violently handling that gentleman's jaw. Jews are not called upon to wear badges: on the contrary, they may live in Piccadilly, or the Minories, according to fancy; they may dress like Christians, and do sometimes in a most elegant and fashionable manner.
Why is the poor College servitor to wear that name and that badge still? Because Universities are the last places into which Reform penetrates. But now that she can go to College and back for five shillings, let her travel down thither.
CHAPTER XIV—ON UNIVERSITY SNOBS
All the men of Saint Boniface will recognize Hugby and Crump in these two pictures. They were tutors in our time, and Crump is since advanced to be President of the College. He was formerly, and is now, a rich specimen of a University Snob.
At five-and-twenty, Crump invented three new metres, and published an edition of an exceedingly improper Greek Comedy, with no less than twenty emendations upon the German text of Schnupfenius and Schnapsius. These Services to religion instantly pointed him out for advancement in the Church, and he is now President of Saint Boniface, and very narrowly escaped the bench.
Crump thinks Saint Boniface the centre of the world, and his position as President the highest in England. He expects the fellows and tutors to pay him the same sort of service that Cardinals pay to the Pope. I am sure Crawler would have no objection to carry his trencher, or Page to hold up the skirts of his gown as he stalks into chapel. He roars out the responses there as if it were an honour to heaven that the President of Saint Boniface should take a part in the service, and in his own lodge and college acknowledges the Sovereign only as his superior.
When the allied monarchs came down, and were made Doctors of the University, a breakfast was given at Saint Boniface; on which occasion Crump allowed the Emperor Alexander to walk before him, but took the PAS himself of the King of Prussia and Prince Blucher. He was going to put the Hetman Platoff to breakfast at a side-table with the under college tutors; but he was induced to relent, and merely entertained that distinguished Cossack with a discourse on his own language, in which he showed that the Hetman knew nothing about it.
As for us undergraduates, we scarcely knew more about Crump than about the Grand Llama. A few favoured youths are asked occasionally to tea at the lodge; but they do not speak unless first addressed by the Doctor; and if they venture to sit down, Crump's follower, Mr. Toady, whispers, 'Gentlemen, will you have the kindness to get up?—The President is passing;' or 'Gentlemen, the President prefers that undergraduates should not sit down;' or words to a similar effect.
To do Crump justice, he does not cringe now to great people. He rather patronizes them than otherwise; and, in London, speaks quite affably to a Duke who has been brought up at his college, or holds out a finger to a Marquis. He does not disguise his own origin, but brags of it with considerable self-gratulation:—'I was a Charity-boy,' says he; 'see what I am now; the greatest Greek scholar of the greatest College of the greatest University of the greatest Empire in the world.' The argument being, that this is a capital world, for beggars, because he, being a beggar, has managed to get on horseback.