Their dull and deep potations excused the brisk intemperance of youth, and their constitutional toasts were not expressive of the most lively loyalty to the House of Hanover." Some Oxonians perhaps could still partly realise the truth of this original picture by their recollections of faint and feeble copies of it drawn from their experience in youthful days.

It seems to be certain that the universities, far from setting a model of good living, were really below the average standard of the morals and manners of the age, and the standard was not high.

Such a satire as the _Terrae Filius_ of Amhurst cannot be accepted without large deductions; but the caricaturist is compelled by the conditions of his craft to aim at the _true seeming_, if he neglects the true, and with the benefit of this limitation the _Terrae Filius_ reveals a deplorable and revolting picture of vulgarity, insolence, and licence.

The universities are spoken of in terms of disparagement by men of all classes.

Lord Chesterfield speaks of the "rust" of Cambridge as something of which a polished man should promptly rid himself.