Page:Letters from England.djvu/92

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
 
IN ENGLAND

What evil am I to say now about Oxford? I cannot praise Oxford after having praised Cambridge; and my friendly connection with Cambridge makes it incumbent upon me to shower fire and brimstone upon haughty Oxford. Unfortunately, I liked the latter place very much; the colleges, there are still bigger and still older, they have beautiful quiet parks, galleries of equally famous ancestors, banquet-halls, memorials and dignified janitors, but all this display and tradition is not aimless; it would seem that the purpose of it is to train not learned specialists, but gentlemen. It is necessary to know this in order to comprehend England in a

88