University College, Oxford, which claims, on rather legendary grounds, to
have been founded by Alfred, held a dinner on occasion of its so-called thousandth anniversary on Wednesday, when the Dean of Westminster made a very amusing reply to the severe criticisms of the Saturday Review, —reputed to be attributable to Mr. E. A. Freeman,—on this mythical piece of history. He said that at the thousandth anniversary of the foundation of Rome, at the time of the Emperor Philip, there was one Saturninus, with an animus tristis et severus, who seeing his father tickled by the humour of the scene, turned away from him in disgust, voile aversato notavit. University College was declared by law to be a royal foundation, and that was enough for their claim. Alfred perhaps did not really found it, for it happened not to be in his kingdom at all at the time specified. Mr. Lowe, however, turned this argument, which he called a part of "the perfidious advocacy of the Dean of Westroinster,"—against the speaker. The land not being in Alfred's kingdom was the very reason, he said, why he would freely give it away, and enjoy the perplexity of the donee at not being able to get it If Saturninus had been pre- sent, Saturninus himself would not have pressed scepticism home more successfully than the old alumni of the College themselves.
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