Mary Hall and
Oriel set, who are really, for the most part, only fit to live with
maiden aunts and keep tame rabbits." And the question, Which was
right--Gladstone or the student? may be answered by another, Which one
became Prime Minister of England?
"Gladstone's first rooms were in the 'old library,' near the hall; but
for the greater part of his time he occupied the right-hand rooms on the
first floor of the first staircase, on the right as the visitor enters
Canterbury gate. He was, alike in study and in conduct, a model
undergraduate, and the great influence of his character and talents was
used with manly resolution against the riotous conduct of the 'Tufts,'
whose brutality caused the death of one of their number in 1831. We read
this note in the correspondence of a friend: 'I heard from Gladstone
yesterday; he says that the number of gentlemen commoners has increased,
is increasing, and ought to be diminished.' Every one who has
experienced the hubristic qualities of the Tufted race, and its
satellites, will cordially sympathize with this sentiment of an orderly
and industrious undergraduate. He was conspicuously moderate in the use
of wine. His good example in this respect affected not only his
contemporaries but also his successors at the university; men who
followed him to Oxford ten years later found it still operative, and
declare that undergraduates drank less in the forties, because Gladstone
had been courageously abstemious in the thirties.
Pages:
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76