In their internal discipline they were overgrown with a picturesque tangle of ...

In their internal discipline they were overgrown with a picturesque tangle of privileges, distinctions, and exemptions; founders' kin and local fellowships, servitors and sizars, gentlemen commoners and fellow commoners: New College and King's took their degrees without examination,' and the tuft, the golden tassel on the cap, survived until 1870 at Oxford as a mark of noble birth.

The governing oligarchy of heads of houses stood aloof from the general body of residents; and the fellows, except where personal influence drew together groups of disciples, stood aloof from the undergraduate. Compared with the eighteenth century, the intellectual life was intenser, manners and morals were more refined.

Compared with the later nineteenth century, studies and sports were far less standardized, manners and morals were still barbaric.

There was much unscientific cricket and rowing, a fair amount of riding and hunting, occasional street fighting, some wenching, and much drinking. But there is universal agreement that the state of the Universities was steadily improving as the juniors became less

childish and the

seniors less remote.

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