Some of the youth of Oxford are, indeed, "young barbarians
at play." A. week or so ago certain undergraduates of Christchurch broke into the library, and dragged from it and destreyed by fire some valuable works of art, among theava bust of Dean Gaisford, by Woolner. To tell these young sots that they have been com- mitting, by this act, a typical outrage against learning and art, peculiarly disgraceful to an academical society, would be to address to them a reproach which, in the characteristic ignorance of their class, they would be unable to comprehend. They will be more sensible to the penalties of the criminal prosecution which, as we are very glad to learn, the authorities have resolved to institute. But we ask whether such things are to happen again. This brutal act is bat the last and worst of a long series of outrages which have been perpetrated in the same place. Christchurch, crowded as it is with young aristocrats, and the nouveaux riches who more than emulate their follies, and carefully preserving the social dis- tinctions which are specially corrupting to a place of education, has long distinguished itself by an insolent contempt of college and university discipline. Some order must be taken with it for the future. Yet Christchurch, after all, does but represent the intel- lectual and moral degradation of the wealthy class which frequents it, and which is daily growing more careless of culture, more vulgar in its extravagance and vice. There is essential vul- garity in that abandonment to whim which is becoming such "good form" among the rich.
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