The Opening of the College Year at Oxford.

University life, after all, is much the same the world over. The same trouble in getting settled for the college year is experienced by the Oxford freshmen, as falls to the lot of the man who makes his entry into the college life of Harvard for the first time. In the following article from the Oxford and Cambridge undergraduate's Journal will be found many incidents which find their counterpart at our own university. "One touch of nature makes the world kin," and our students will fully appreciate the pathos of the account of the English undergraduate's struggle with the haughty goody, anglice, "bed-make."

"Every one- except the fortunate possessor of a most phlegmatic temperament- seems to be in a state of unusual bustle and activity, and to be rushing about the venerable streets of the Alma Mater in a style that savors either of fire or examination time. Anxious faces are to be seen peering nervously into every shop window, and consulting in a furtive manner memoranda of purchases to be accomplished post-haste, according to the directions of the inexorable bed-maker or landlady. Most unhappy of all appear the Freshmen who make their purchases under the supervision of an indulgent father, guardian, or uncle, and who seem to say by their conscious and almost guilty look, "Yes, we are Freshmen, but we really cannot help it." It is a curious fact, and one which cannot fail to be observed, that the faste of the Freshmen are nearly always diametrically opposed to the desires of officiating chaperon. Thus one constantly hears fought out, with an energy worthy of a higher subject, such questions as the relative merits of coffee-pots, or the varied advantages of Keiller's as opposed to Cairn's marmalade; in such crises as these it is amusing to watch the face of the obsequious shop-walker, as he tries his utmost to conciliate the contending parties by agreeing first with the one, then with the other. Fortunate, indeed, is the Freshman who has a brother or cousin .of a year or two's standing, to make all his purchases for him, in the lordly and conclusive manner generally adopted by those who have had some experience of 'Varsity tradesmen.

If this is the general aspect of affairs outside, in the public thoroughfares, how much worse is it in the privacy of men's rooms where the watchful eye of the public does not enter! What harrowing scenes could be witnessed between.

maker, if one were only possessed of an invisible cloak. The coalscuttle which has done duty for three generations of undergraduates is palmed off as "the very last purchis which Mr. Blank made, and he was a real gentleman he was, and behaved like one." Mr. Blank- the real gentleman- the immediate predecessor in one's room, is generally discovered afterwards not to have displayed toward the bed-maker the extraordinary quality with which she persists in crediting him; indeed he very often turns out to have had a very low opinion of that amiable lady's character as developed by the work she did, or is supposed to have done for him.

The burden of settling down, though it naturally falls with greater weight upon the shoulders of Freshmen, yet by no means passes by those who have kept three or more terms. The proud possessor of a library, however small, is not pleased to find that during his absence his landlady, in a sudden mania of spring-cleaning, has ruthlessly dragged out and dusted all his cherished volumes, and has replaced them perfectly regardless of size or shape, with that want of an eye to the general effect which is so characteristic of the average lodging-housekeeper.

Moreover, in addition to the furnishing of rooms, there is also a certain element of worry and uncertainty in settling what lectures are to be attended, and whether or no the use of "a coach" is advisable. In the arrangement of these matters, let us look with the eye of pity and contempt upon the work which falls upon the Tutors, and if they continually forget our names when we call upon them, and very evidently regard our presence as a necessary but still most annoying infliction, let us remember that they, too, are but human, and that it is to such as they that the words were written,

"AEquam memento rebus in arduis Servare mentem."