LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
NON-COLLEGIATE STUDENTS AT OXFORD.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Your recent article on the " Spinning-House " contains.
some startling assertions which affect non-collegiate students.. It says :— " In each of the three cities we have named [Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Dublin], plenty of instances have occurred, and are now occurring, of shop-assistants and small clerks who have put their names on the University books, and in their spare hours have managed to do enough reading to pass their examinations with so much credit that, after having taken their degrees, they have been able to enter the Church or the Bar, or to adopt some other professional career, instead of the shop or the office. Strange. to relate, however, instances of this kind are practically unknown at Oxford or Cambridge, though the existence of the unattached. or non-collegiate students makes it quite possible for a lad behind the counter to belong to the University. Both Universities can, now boast plenty of men belonging originally to the humbler walks of life, but they are, as a rule, persons who have saved a little money to come up to College, or else have won some sort of scholarship or exhibition. The man who joins thn University because he is near to 'it, but who otherwise would never have dreamed it possible to take a degree, does not exist."
Allow me, on the part of Oxford, to give an unqualified contradiction to these statements. We rejoice to have among Our non-collegiate students all sorts and conditions of men, and many of our members belong to the class of persons' whom the writer of your article describes as without existence..
— I am, Sir, &c., R. W. M. POPE, Censor of Non-Collegiate Students. Oxford, March 16th, [We are delighted to hear that we were wrong. Some ten or twelve years ago, the fact was undoubtedly as stated by us..
— ED. Spectator.]
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