And partly also, no doubt, to the apparently rapid increase
in the numbers of the class who attend the Universities, and who, therefore, interest their friends and connections in the great match of the year. The Times says that the numbers of all ranks on the books of the Cambridge Colleges was, in 1865, no less than 8,488,—though in 1835 it was only 5,399. The Oxford numbers are, no doubt, much less than Cambridge, but are they increasing in the same proportion? It is said that both Univer- sities are losing their aristocratic students, who are replaced by much larger numbers of the middle classes. If this be so, it is a bad omen for the aristocracy. When men get too fastidious for culture because they must share it with others of lower rank, they are likely enough to become the objects of fastidious exclu- siveness, instead of its subjects.
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