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XI. CHRIST CHURCH CHOIR 209
bright promise, and of kind disposition, he had less natural activity, and less-being Irish,-common sense, than the Scot; and the University made no attempt to give him more. It has been the pride of recent days to equalize the position, and disguise the distinction of noble and servitor.1 Perhaps it might have been wiser, instead of effacing the distinction, to reverse the manner of it. In those days the happy servitor’s tenure of his college-room and revenue depended on his industry, while it was the privilege of the noble to support with lavish gifts the college, from which he expected no return, and to buy with sums equivalent to his dignity the privileges of rejecting alike its instruction and its control. It seems to me singular, and little suggestive of sagacity in the common English character, that it had never occurred to either an old dean, or a young duke, that possibly the Church of England and the House of Peers might hold a different position in the country in years to come if the entrance examination had been made severer for the rich than the poor; and the nobility and good breeding of a student expected to be blazoned consistently by the shield on his seal, the tassel on his cap, the grace of his conduct, and the accuracy of his learning.
In the last respect, indeed, Eton and Harrow boys are for ever distinguished,-whether idle or industrious in after life,-from youth of general England; but how much of the best capacity of her noblesse is lost by her carelessness of their university training, she may soon have more serious cause to calculate than I am willing to foretell.
I have little to record of my admired Irish fellow-student than that he gave the supper at which my freshman’s initiation into the body of gentlemen-commoners was to be duly and formally ratified.2 Curious glances were directed to me under the ordeal of the necessary toasts,-
1 [See above, § 211, p. 184.]
2 [Ruskin gives an account of this “wine” in The Crown of Wild Olive, § 148 (Vol. XVIII. p. 506); see also ibid., p. 169 n. See also Vol. XVII. p. 495. For some further account of Ruskin’s undergraduate experiences, see the Introduction; above, pp. lxii.-lxv.]
XXXV. O
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