It will be a glorious opportunity for Oxford to redeem
her reputation. To return Mr. Gladstone once more, at the very moment when he is leading the attack on the Irish Establishment, would be a most noble act of penitence and amendment, —a true conversion. But this is probably too exalted an act of virtue to look for from those alumni of bitter ' sweetness ' and overshadowed light.' If we ask for the man, on the Liberal side of the House, best fitted to represent precisely the attitude of mind which Sir William Heathcote has taken up on the Conservative side of the House, we should mention Sir Roundell Palmer, and no one could be more deserving of the honour of the Univer- sity scat. On the Irish Church question he has assumed a position of hesitation and doubt which we sincerely regret indeed, but which would go far to reconcile all the doubting Liberals and some of the less stiffnecked. Conservatives to his election. Scholarly, polished, urbane, he has in their highest form the characteristics of "sweetness and light" which Mr. Arnold holds to be native to Oxford air. He has ecclesiastical sympathies so defined as to recommend him to the clergy, for whom he has done a special service in selecting a beautiful volume of hymns. As a lawyer he is more Conservative than as a politician. He WM the first Liberal of Ministerial standing publicly to recommend household suffrage, just as Mr. Henley was the first Conservative. On the whole, the University would receive as much honour as it would confer by returning him to the first Parliament electel under the very suffrage he was so sagacious as to foresee and advocate at a time when the Liberals hesitated to recommend a 71. suffrage, and the Tories stoutly resisted reduction in any shape whatever. It is said that Mr. Mowbray, the Judge Advocate, is to be the Conservative candidate. Ile is a man of no intellectual weight.
