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 always need good assailants of humbug. 'Cynic,' indeed, has a very variable connotation, and it would be altogether wrong to apply the epithet to Bagehot without qualification. In Hutton's life of his friend the word inevitably comes up, but with the explanation that it refers to a youthful failing, more or less outlived. Bagehot, he admits, always scorned a fool, and in early days the scorn was not yet tempered by the compassion which is the growth of later years—when we have come to know how many and what excellent people belong to the class. Bagehot's satirical 'hear, hear,' he tells us, took the heart out of young orators at debating societies and reduced the over-eloquent man to his 'lowest terms.' His 'cynicism' meant anything but indifference. It was combined with exuberantly high spirits and intense enjoyment of intellectual combats. University College, in Gower Street, was then, if Hutton is right, a far more 'awakening' place than most Oxford colleges. Bagehot, like all clever lads, owed less to lecturers than to his contemporaries: to the impact, as he says, of thought upon thought, to 'mirth and refutation, ridicule and laughter,' which are the 'free play of the natural mind.' The young men discussed every topic from the