Yesterday week, too late for our last impression, Lord Russell
presented to the House of Lords the petition from 106 Oxford Fellows, Tutors, and Heads of Houses against requir- ing Masters of Arts to subscribe the Articles and the Thirty- sixth Canon. Out of the 106 subscribers, be said, 65 had obtained a first-class in classics, and 15 in mathematics, so that 80 out of the 106, or just above three-quarters, are first- class men. Of all the Oxford "follows," 71 signed the petition and 366 did not ; but then 56 out of the 71 who did, or four-fifths, were first-class men ; while of the 366 who did not, only 75, or one-fifth, were first-class men. Lord Derby, the Chancellor of the Oxford University, made a very weak and angry reply, in which he strengthened his opponents' position by saying that only two out of twenty-four heads of colleges,—exactly one twelfth, had signed the petition. So much the better for the petition. The head of an Oxford college recently remarked, in opposing the introduction of gas, that he believed it had been used "in some places" with success, but it was not a suitable thing for the University of Oxford.
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