How many spots in life are there which will bear comparison with the
beginning of a college boy’s second term at Oxford? So far as external
circumstances are concerned, it seems hard to know what a man could
find to ask for at that period of his life, if a fairy godmother were
to alight in his rooms and offer him the usual three wishes. In our
second term we are no longer freshmen, and begin to feel ourselves at
home, while both “smalls” and “greats” are sufficiently distant to
be altogether ignored =if= we are that way inclined, or to be looked
forward to with confidence that the game is in our own hands if we
are reading men. Our financial position—unless we have exercised rare
ingenuity in involving ourselves—is all that heart can desire; we have
ample allowances paid in quarterly to the university bankers without
thought or trouble of ours, and our credit is at its zenith. It is a
part of our recognized duty to repay the hospitality we have received
as freshmen; and all men will be sure to come to our first parties,
to see how we do the thing; it will be our own fault if we do not
keep them in future. We have not had time to injure our characters
to any material extent with the authorities of our own college, or
of the university. Our spirits are never likely to be higher, or our
digestions better. These, and many other comforts and advantages,
environ the fortunate youth returning to Oxford after his first
vacation; thrice fortunate, however, if it is Easter term to which
he is returning; for that Easter term, with the four days’ vacation,
and little Trinity term at the head of it, is surely the cream of the
Oxford year. Then, even in this our stern Northern climate, the sun
is beginning to have power, the days have lengthened out, great-coats
are unnecessary at morning chapel, and the miseries of numbed hands
and shivering skins no longer accompany every pull on the river and
canter on Bullingdon. In Christ-church meadows and the college gardens
the birds are making sweet music in the tall elms. You may almost hear
the thick grass growing, and the buds on tree and shrub are changing
from brown, red, or purple, to emerald green under your eyes; the
glorious old city is putting on her best looks and bursting out into
laughter and song. In a few weeks the races begin, and Cowley marsh
will be alive with white tents and joyous cricketers. A quick ear,
on the towing-path by the Gut, may feast at one time on those three
sweet sounds, the thud, thud of the eight-oar, the crack of the rifles
at the Weirs, and the click of the bat on the Magdalen ground. And
then Commemoration rises in the background, with its clouds of fair
visitors, and visions of excursions to Woodstock and Nuneham in the
summer days—of windows open on to the old quadrangles in the long still
evenings, through which silver laughter and strains of sweet music, not
made by man, steal out and puzzle the old celibate jackdaws, peering
down from the battlements with heads on one side. To crown all, long
vacation, beginning with the run to Henley regatta, or up to town to
see the match with Cambridge at Lord’s, and taste some of the sweets of
the season before starting on some pleasure tour or reading-party, or
dropping back into the quiet pleasures of English country life! Surely
the lot of young Englishmen who frequent our universities is cast in
pleasant places. The country has a right to expect something from those
for whom she finds such a life as this in the years when enjoyment is
keenest.