CHAPTER XIII.

ON CLERICAL SNOBS.

AMONG the varieties of the Snob Clerical, the University Snob and the Scholastic Snob ought never to be forgotten ; they form a very strong battalion in the black-coated army.

The wisdom of our ancestors (which I admire more and more every day) seemed to have determined that the education of youth was so paltry and unimportant a matter, that almost any man, armed with a birch and a regulation cassock and degree, might undertake the charge and many an honest country gentleman may be found to the present day, who takes very good care to have a character with his butler when he engages him, and will not purchase a horse without the strongest warranty and the closest inspection; but sends off his son, young John Thomas, to school without asking any questions about the Schoolmaster, and places the lad at Switchester College, under Doctor Block, because he (the good old English gentleman) had been at Switchester, under Doctor Buzwig, forty years ago.

We have a love for all little boys at school; for many scores of thousands of them read and love Punch: - - may he never write a word that shall not be honest and fit for them to read! He will not have his young friends to be Snobs in the future, or to be bullied by snobs, or given over to such to be educated. Our connection with the youth at the Universities is very close and affectionate. The candid undergraduate is our friend. The pompous old College Don trembles in his common room, lest we should attack him and show him up as a Snob.

When railroads were threatening to invade the land which they have since conquered, it may be recollected what a shrieking and outery the authorities of Oxford and Eton made, lest the iron abominations should come near those seats of pure learning, and tempt the British youth astray. The supplications were in vain; the railroad is in upon them, and the old world institutions are doomed. I felt charmed to read in the papers the other day a most veracious puffing advertisement headed, "To College and back for Five Shillings." "The College Gardens (it said) will be thrown open on this occasion; the College youths will perform a regatta; the Chapel of King's

College will have its celebrated music;" and all for five shillings! The Goths have got into Rome; Napoleon Stephenson draws his republican lines round the sacred old cities; and the ecclesiastical big-wigs who garrison them must prepare to lay down key and crosier before the iron conqueror.

If you consider, dear reader, what profound snobbishness the University System produced, you will allow that it is time to attack some of those feudal middle-age superstitions. If you go down for five shillings to look at the College Youths," you may see one sneaking down the court without a tassel to his cap; another with a gold or silver fringe to his velvet trencher; a third lad with a master's gown and hat, walking at ease over the sacred College grass-plats, which common men must not tread on.

He may do it because he is a nobleman. Because a lad is a lord, the University gives him a degree at the end of two years which another is seven in acquiring. Because he is a lord, he has no call to go through an examination. Any man who has not been to College and back for five shillings, would not believe in such distinctions in a place of education, so absurd and monstrous do they seem to be.

The lads with gold and silver lace are sons of rich gentlemen, and called Fellow Commoners; they are privileged to feed better than the pensioners, and to have wine with their victuals, which the latter can only get in their rooms.

The unlucky boys who have no tassels to their caps, are called sizars-servitors at Oxford (a very pretty and gentleman like title). A distinction is made in their clothes because they are poor; for which reason they wear a badge of poverty, and are not allowed to take their meals with their fellowstudents.

When this wicked and shameful distinction was set up, it was of a piece with all the rest - -a part of the brutal, unchristian, blundering feudal system. Distinctions of rank were then so strongly insisted upon, that it would have been thought blasphemy to doubt them, as blasphemous as it is in parts of the United States now for a nigger to set up as the equal of a white man. A ruffian like Henry VIII. talked as gravely about the divine powers vested in him, as if he had been an inspired prophet. A wretch like James I. not only believed that there was in himself a particular sanctity, but other people believed him. Government regulated the length of a merchant's shoes as well as meddled with his trade, prices, exports, machinery. It thought itself justified in roasting a man for his

religion, or pulling a Jew's teeth out if he did not pay a contribution, or ordered him to dress in a yellow gabardine, and locked him in a particular quarter.

Now a merchant may wear what boots he pleases, and has pretty nearly acquired the privilege of buying and selfing without the Government laying its paws upon the bargain. The stake for heretics is gone; the pillory is taken down; Bishops are even found lifting up their voices against the remains of persecution, and ready to do away with the last Catholic Disabilities. Sir Robert Peel, though he wished it ever so much, has no power over Mr. Benjamin Disraeli's grinders, or any means of violently handling that gentleman's jaw. Jews are not called upon to wear badges: on the contrary, they may live in Piccadilly, or the Minories, according to fancy; they may dress like Christians, and do sometimes in a most elegant and fashionable manner.

Why is the poor College servitor to wear that name and that badge still? Because Universities are the last places into which Reform penetrates. But now that she can go to College and back for five shillings, let her travel down thither.

CHAPTER XIV.

ON UNIVERSITY SNOBS.

ALL the men of Saint Boniface will recognize Hugby and Crump in these two pictures. They were tutors in our time, and Crump is since advanced to be President of the College. He was formerly, and is now, a rich specimen of a University Snob.

At five-and-twenty, Crump invented three new metres, and published an edition of an exceedingly improper Greek Comedy, with no less than twenty emendations upon the German text of Schnupfenius and Schnapsius. These services to religion instantly pointed him out for advancement in the Church, and he is now President of Saint Boniface, and very narrowly escaped the bench.

Crump thinks Saint Boniface the centre of the world, and his position as President the highest in England. He expects the fellows and tutors to pay him the same sort of service that This refers to an illustrated edition of the work.

Cardinals pay to the Pope. I am sure Crawler would have no objection to carry his trencher, or Page to hold up the skirts of his gown as he stalks into chapel. He roars out the responses there as if it were an honor to heaven that the President of Saint Boniface should take a part in the service, and in his own lodge and college acknowledges the Sovereign only as his superior.

When the allied monarchs came down, and were made Doctors of the University, a breakfast was given at Saint Boniface; on which occasion Crump allowed the Emperor Alexander to walk before him, but took the pas himself of the King of Prussia and Prince Blucher. He was going to put the Hetinan Platoff to breakfast at a side-table with the under college tutors; but he was induced to relent, and merely entertained that distinguished Cossack with a discourse on his own language, in which he showed that the Hetman knew nothing about it.

As for us undergraduates, we scarcely knew more about Crump than about the Grand Llama. A few favored youths are asked occasionally to tea at the lodge; but they do not speak unless first addressed by the Doctor; and if they venture to sit down, Crump's follower, Mr. Toady, whispers "Gentlemen, will you have the kindness to get up? The President is passing" or "Gentlemen, the President prefers that undergraduates should not sit down; or words to a similar effect.

To do Crump justice, he does not cringe now to great people. He rather patronizes them than otherwise; and, in London, speaks quite affably to a Duke who has been brought up at his college, or holds out a finger to a Marquis. He does not disguise his own origin, but brags of it with considerable self-gratulation: "I was a Charity-boy," says he; "see what I am now; the greatest Greek scholar of the greatest College of the greatest University of the greatest Empire in the world." The argument being, that this is a capital world for beggars, because he, being a beggar, has managed to get on horseback.

Hugby owes his eminence to patient merit and agreeable perseverance. He is a meek, mild, inoffensive creature, with just enough of scholarship to fit him to hold a lecture, or set an examination paper. He rose by kindness to the aristocracy. It was wonderful to see the way in which that poor creature grovelled before a nobleman or a lord's nephew, or even some noisy and disreputable commoner, the friend of a lord. He

used to give the young noblemen the most painful and elaborate breakfasts, and adopt a jaunty genteel air, and talk with them (although he was decidedly serious) about the opera, or the last run with the hounds. It was good to watch him in the midst of a circle of young tufts, with his mean, smiling, eager, uneasy familiarity. He used to write home confidential letters to their parents, and made it his duty to call upon them when in town, to condole or rejoice with them when a death, birth, or marriage took place in their family; and to feast them whenever they came to the University. I recollect a letter lying on a desk in his lecture-room for a whole term, beginning, My Lord Duke." It was to show us that he corresponded with such dignities.

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When the late lamented Lord Glenlivat, who broke his neck at a hurdle-race, at the premature age of twenty-four, was at the University, the amiable young fellow, passing to his rooms in the early morning, and seeing Hugby's boots at his door, on the same staircase, playfully wadded the insides of the boots with cobbler's wax, which caused excruciating pains to the Rev. Mr. Hugby, when he came to take them off the same evening, before dining with the Master of St. Crispin's.

Everybody gave the credit of this admirable piece of fun to Lord Glenlivat's friend, Bob Tizzy, who was famous for such feats, and who had already made away with the college pumphandle; filed St. Boniface's nose smooth with his face; carried off four images of nigger-boys from the tobacconists; painted the senior proctor's horse pea-green, &c. &c.; and Bob (who was of the party certainly, and would not peach,) was just on the point of incurring expulsion, and so losing the family living which was in store for him, when Glenlivat nobly stepped forward, owned himself to be the author of the delightful jeu-d'esprit, apologized to the tutor, and accepted the rusti

cation.

Hugby cried when Glenlivat apologized; if the young nobleman had kicked him round the court, I believe the tutor would have been happy, so that an apology and a reconciliation might subsequently ensue. My lord," said he, "in your conduct on this and all other occasions, you have acted as becomes a gentleman; you have been an honor to the University, as you will be to the peerage, I am sure, when the amiable vivacity of youth is calmed down, and you are called upon to take your proper share in the government of the nation." And when his lordship took leave of the University, Hugby presented him with a copy of his Sermons to a Nobleman's Family" (Hugby