But

care for poetry, but it is only because he never tries to read any. I read him one or two things the other day, and he was quite surprised that there was anything so good in poetry. What does he think about religion and that sort of thing? When he first came up fresh from school, he used to come to the Holy Communion. Now he has given it up. He doesn't think he got much from it. He prefers to go to Roll Call instead of chapel on week days. He says he doesn't always feel inclined to say his prayers. He hasn't the ghost of an idea what he means to do after Oxford. The fact is he enjoys himself a great deal too much here to think about anything else for long together. I tell him he is preparing a bad time for himself later on, when he will have to settle his profession in a hurry. the worst is, while he is in this mood, he may drift so easily into a much worse one. That sort of boy often goes from one kind of excitement to another. He gets into the habit of taking rather more wine than he had better take whenever he dines at one of the clubs; then he spends the evening in what they call a buffy state, not drunk, but very excited and a bit muddled with drink. One day he will go and make a nuisance of himself at the theatre, another he will come and shout about the College, and if that goes on long, it will become chronic; he will do it nearly every night. If he is a gentleman and amusing in his cups, there will be no very strong public opinion against him among the sort of men whom Harry goes about with now, whose chief object is to have a good time up at the 'Varsity. Sometimes they do worse than this. Most of them would say-I'm sure Harry would say 'Oh, of course this will have to come to an end when we go down; even as it is, I can do without it all in the vacs.' Some of them do settle down wonderfully quickly when they leave Oxford; some of them can't get over the craving for excitement, and it plays the mischief with them. Your business and mine is to make them feel responsible while they are up here. But you see there's nothing that Harry believes in or cares about just now that is to be trusted to hold him back. He lives for pleasure; what you call innocent pleasure, at present; and he excuses himself by saying to himself that it will be only for four years. And, if I may say so, you don't do what you might to help him. In the vacations what you do for him is to try to give him as good a time as you can; and if he tries to work, his sisters want him to take them about to balls or lawn-tennis parties, and you want him to go out shooting. But that's enough about him. His brother Dick is quite a different person. He's much stupider, but he works like a brick, though he does not think he gets much out of it. The sight of him working always makes me feel ashamed of myself. He's just as good as his brother at

games-he's an awfully good captain, and a splendid fellow to get anything up that wants trouble and requires people to be managed. He comes to chapel; he's a regular communicant; but he doesn't talk about religion: for the life of me I don't know what he thinks about it all. But happily God is greater than my heart or his; He knows what is going on inside there. But I can see the outside. Dick isn't what you call a quiet man. He can make a row with the best. But he has never done any one any harm in the place, and I know several instances where he's done a lot of good. He thinks this bridge-playing is rot and unsociable; that's something. But, of course, he is no Puritan about it either. And there are one or two people I could name who might have gone to the devil right away but for Dick. Probably he hardly realises that; I don't expect he said much. It's wonderful how different your boys both are from their cousin Tom. Of course, he is rather an abler man; he might have been a scholar so far as his wits are concerned; but after all he is not so much cleverer than Harry. Partly it was that he came across a really interesting schoolmaster. Well, he reads all sorts of books-he knows the English poets; he has even read some Ruskin -odd how few people read him compared with fifteen years ago!— and he would rather talk about anything than athletics. He rows all right and enjoys it, but when he comes up from the river he has had enough of it for the day. He has always been a keen politician, and is to be heard at the Union, and is secretary to one of the political clubs. He is really interesting to talk to on any subject." "Well, I suppose you talk to him on religion. Which of my sons is he most like in that?" "He is like neither. He reads everything and doubts everything. He admires the work of men like Father Dolling in the slums, and he is immensely attracted by the picture of our Lord's character drawn in Pro Christo et Ecclesia. But he does not know what to believe himself. You see he has heard such different things said by different people. His mother is a dear good woman, very active in good works, but having been brought up herself in the straitest sect of Evangelicalism, she seems to him to live in a world which, as he says, he can't by any possibility think himself into. Then he hears a clergyman who was suddenly called upon to celebrate for a dying person one afternoon, and did so, say that he intends next time he goes to confession to confess his non-fasting Communion as a deadly sin. There is another world which Tom can't think himself into. But the boy has sincerity and reverence, and good brains and a good heart, and he will find the truth one day. We are very impatient sometimes: after all, God has eternity to work in. But I see you want to ask me a question." "Yes. One

of my friends told me that his son told him that he went one Sunday evening to a party in the junior common room of one of the colleges (I had thought it was rather a good college), where a good many of the young fellows got drunk and the entertainment chiefly consisted in singing regular music-hall songs. Does such a thing go on in many colleges in Oxford?" "No, I don't think it does. I hope if it began here we should be able to put our feet down pretty quickly, or that the better men would do so for themselves. It is no wonder if a boy's conscience gets knocked silly for a time when he allows himself, just after leaving a strict school or home, to go to such a party regularly as an ordinary piece of his college life." "Do you think the standard of public opinion about drunkenness is very low in the University?" "That's rather a difficult question to answer shortly. There is a very low standard about protesting against drunkenness. But you mustn't think that all the men who would think little and say nothing of another man for being drunk, would be equally ready to get drunk themselves. The bump suppers and boating wines are much less beastly than they were. The men have in many colleges got leave to dance after them; or in some other way invented something better to do than to get drunk. My experience is, on the whole, that teetotalism has diminished in the University, and so has drunkenness. But for all that there is enough drunkenness to be seen in Oxford absolutely to prevent the conversion of any Mohammedan who comes here." "What do you think, Mr. Buckemup, about this boating on Sundays? I don't much mind myself, but my wife would be very sad if she knew about it." "Well, I am all for saying to a young man: 'Make up your mind what is right, and do it; but don't just drift about according to fashion. And if you ask me for my opinion, it is this: Sunday is not the Sabbath; it is a Christian institution, Sunday. Your business is, and your pleasure ought to be, to go to church, to worship God, and to read about your religion, as much as you profitably can on that day. For the rest, do anything which helps you to do your duty. Only when you are choosing what to do, remember to be merciful to your servants.' There's an example for us, though not a commandment, in the words, 'that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou.' But I didn't mean to be beguiled into preaching. Well, good-bye! But you will remember, won't you, that I can't be your sons' father?"

Enough of Mr. Buckemup and his jargon. The discerning reader will not fail to catch the points which Mr. Buckemup would impress on his collocutor. For instance,

Mr. Buckemup obviously would say, and the present writer would agree, that the most important cause of the scarcity of candidates for Holy Orders is the 'innocent' parental indulgence and self-indulgence of the young men of to-day.

The reader conversant with the University will perhaps complain that this article has presented him with no picture of the best kind of undergraduate. The complaint is just. The golden race is not extinct, but the present writer will not expose his admiration of it to the criticism of silver incredulity.

This article is to some extent an indictment of Oxford. But it had a deeper purpose. It was meant for a call to the power latent in Oxford and England to rise up to certain tasks. The first is to rethink and to restate the fundamental truths of Christianity. It may be that among the present generations of Oxford tutors some will be found willing and able. Every line of Contentio Veritatis witnesses to a consciousness of the urgency of this duty. It might well be prayed that a still younger band may gird themselves for the great struggle. The next task is to gain recognition for Christian thought as a necessary part of any curriculum of studies in the University, but especially of any studies philosophical or historical. If this is ever to come about, it must be by abandoning the demand that Christianity is only to be taught in the form of 'definite Church teaching.' There is need of an ampler charity and a far more virile faith in the strength of truth. The third task is a new sincerity, profundity, and audacity of preaching, imaginatively modern and ancient, for the truth is modern as man who apprehends it and ancient as God whom it apprehends. The fourth task is the reform of academical teachers, which, indeed, they can only do for themselves. But this article has ventured to point out, with special reference, as it was an article on religion, to the clergy, the lines of reform which some are already following, upon which there is good hope of rea advance. Academical teachers need concernment and contact with life not academical, and practice in that unselfconscious sympathy with the souls of men, delicate in silence yet ready to speak, which belongs to the Redeemer. Lastly,

there are the tasks which lie before those many who are birds of passage in Oxford, parents and young men. They have rather an incidental place in this article. Yet it cannot but appear that the writer is dissatisfied with what he thinks to be the opinions of many of them about the University. It lies with them much more than with the dons to reduce to sane proportions the interest in athletics. It lies with parents (learning from our failures in war and commerce if not from the sheer reason of the thing) to form a correct estimate of the value of the mind and the soul as well as of the body of man, and by habitual act and word to impress it on their children. And if any pious reader would add definiteness to his prayers for the youth of the Universities, let him pray that they may put off all aimlessness, irresponsibility, irresolution, and self-indulgence, that they may be inspired with a love of learning new to the history of England, that out of all the conflicts of opinion they may find a firm faith, though it be with tears, and that they may begin, even in Oxford, to enlighten their citizenship of their country by practical care for their fellow-citizens.

ART. II.-LAMARCK, DARWIN, AND WEISMANN. 1. Philosophie Zoologique. Par J. B. P. A. LAMARCK. (Paris, 1809.)

2. The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. By CHARLES DARWIN. (London, 1859.)

3. Das Keimplasma: eine Theorie der Vererbung. Von AUGUST WEISMANN. (Jena, 1892.)

And other works.

IT is no doubt true that in some sense or other 'we are all evolutionists now.' As Lord Salisbury said at Oxford in 1894, Darwin 'has, as a matter of fact, disposed of the doctrine of the immutability of species.' The theory of development by descent in the animal and vegetable kingdoms is universally received among men of science, and is at the present day as much a part of the popular view of nature as