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7 Anon happened to occupy—nobody but Americans seemed to want to know such things—the chief of the College, at the end of half a century's association with the College, could not tell.

The Hall-porter of that very College, however, who did not know, of course, was willing to acknowledge his ignorance, and his mortification over his ignorance, and to accept, with the usual legal tip, any information which the Trans-Atlantic student could give him, relating to a subject with which it was his own business to be familiar.

These are some of the dead walls of Oxford, against which the Literary Landmarker knocks his head; these are some of the iron-studded, oaken gates, against which, in vain, he beats the fists which wield his pen.

The cream of Oxford's academic society has been described as intellectual but not intelligent. The higher University walks are, undoubtedly, trod by certain men who not infrequently know all about the Dative Case and about the Birds of Aristophanes, but who often know nothing, and scorn to know anything, about the Dreyfus Case or about the sparrows who flit and flitter in their own back yards; men who are absolutely familiar with all the details of the Second Punic War, and who are utterly unfamiliar with the Transvaal