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50 CAMBRIDGE FIFTY YEARS AGO [cnu. IV
foreign nations being made once, and that was by Arthur
Myers, out walking. He took upon himself to be didaeticabout
the state of Europe and of the world in general,
and I did not take in one single word, not knowing, indeed,
in which hemisphere most of the places were.
In short, though the thorny problem of the passing of
the schoolboy to the university is solved far better in
England than it is said to be in France or Germany, the
transition in the seventies was far too abrupt.
The first deleterious influence to which many of our fine
lads succumbed was the lack of supervision on the part of
the college authorities-both at Oxford and Cambridge.
Each freshman was assigned to a tutor, but our relations
were purely formal, and I have no recollection of a single
word of advice from any don in the place during the years
in which ·we were engaged in ascertaining why we were
in this world.•
There was some religious influence, but of a narrow type,
and it told only on boys brought up in evangelical traditions.
Against this was the open antagonism of nearlynot
quite-all the brilliant intellectual lights among the
younger men who were either newly ereated fellows of
the college or were reading for a fellowship. ·Most of these
were known and professed agnostics, and before we were
in Cambridge one term we were plunged into wild, crude
speculations started by men· twice as able as any of us,
and four or five years older. It is difficult to imagine an
atmosphere more likely to upse:t fundamental convictions,
to magnify the clahns of intellect and leave a bewildered
enquirer with the notion that if he did his duties as a citizen
-though those duties wer!l seldom mentioned-it would
matter nothing what he believed. Several of these men
reverted in later life to something like Christianity, and I
woJlld venture to affirm that what survived of religion
I. Thompson•s mo' about a c. Jebb tha1i • the time he 08oD epare from
tha negleot of his pupils ha devotes to tha adomment of his person " was
mtmifeetly unjust. Jebb, at that time anyhow, about 1877, wae not
a fop ; and if he neglected his pupils, it Willi becaU66 it was upaoted of
him.