THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF CHAFF.
[TO Tile EDITOP. OR TUB "SPECTATOR."1 SIR,—Your article on the London University in the Spectator of May 17th prompts me to say a word more than your own about one of the differences between the practical education given in London and that provided at Oxford and Cambridge, a difference which has often struck me as vital, and telling greatly in favour of Oxford and Cambridge. It is not the intellectual side of the matter, but the social, to which I refer, and the great differentiating element therein contained to which I refer is—chaff ! What do Londoners know of it (as a part of their education) ? What do not Oxford and Cam- bridge men ? And what do not they owe to it ? I have an immense respect for the London standard of attainments—as befits the father of a London M.D.—but I have often wished that every London undergraduate could have a term or two on the banks of the Isis or the Cam. He would get such a lot of conceit knocked out of him. I have had more than one London B.A. as a curate. In each case the man had never been properly chaffed. In each case the man got into a big "wax" on the smallest approach to it. My present curate (B.A. London) fired up like La SouffTiere, and told me he " had Irish blood in his veins ! " I soaped him down accordingly ; but it showed a grievous want in his University training. I remember a B.A. London who went up to Trinity with me in 1850. A more bumptious animal never breathed. Tall, hand- some, insolent, clever up to a certain point, he was as a Fresh- man one of the most unpleasant prigs possible; and all the more because he was proud of being already a London B.A. Men quietly took him in hand, and combed him down by degrees, until he became a different creature, and much im- proved. He left Cambridge a far more presentable person, and proved it, too, by turning out an excellent and hard- working cleric for the remaining years of his life, which were only too short. All hail to chaff from one's aequales as a .factor in University training ! I fear London will never give it. I wonder what Oxford will do in this line to the Rhodes scholars of Oriel! Alas ! I shall not live to know.—I am,
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