a longer period, and it is organically bound up with the general shifting of ground that marks the incursion of business principles.
While the authorities have turned their attention primarily to the undergraduate division and its numerical increase, they have at the same time, and largely with the same end in view, endeavoured to give it more of the character of a "gentleman's college"; that is to say, an establishment for the cultivation of the graces of gentility and a suitable place of residence for young men of spendthrift habits. The improvement sought in these endeavours is not so much the increase and acceleration of scholarly pursuits, as a furthering of "social" proficiency. A "gentleman's college" is an establishment in which scholarship is advisedly made subordinate to genteel dissipation, to a grounding in those methods of conspicuous consumption that should engage the thought and energies of a well-to-do man of the world. Such an ideal, more or less overtly, appears to be gaining ground among the larger universities; and, needless to say, it is therefore also gaining, by force of precedent and imitation, among the younger schools engaged in more of a struggle to achieve a secure footing of respectability.
Its bearing on the higher learning is, of course, sufficiently plain; and its intimate connection with business principles at large should be equally plain. The scheme of reputability in the pecuniary culture comprises not only the imperative duty of acquiring something more than an equitable share of the community's wealth, but also the dutiful privilege of spending this acquired wealth, and the leisure that goes with it, in a reputably conspicuous way, according to the ritual of decorum in force for the time being. So that proficiency in the decorously conspicuous waste of time and means is no less essential in the end
