R,CHARD MONCKTON MILNES was born in the year - OUDL Home

Oxford in the 'Seventies 239survivors are older now, if not wiser, than the Masterwas then.X. UNDERGRADUATE TYPESWell, well! However young Dons in the 'seventies mayhave looked to imperfectly Socratic eyes, what should beremembered of the Ephebi, the passing undergraduates?They were not always on their best behaviour! Thus theEncaenia of 1872 suffered an ignominious closure, whenthe Vice-Chancellor (Dr Liddell) abruptly quitted theSheldonian Theatre, in consequence of the turbulence ofthe Olympians. But a prophylactic for such excesses wasfound by introducing a bevy of sisters and cousins to sitwith the undergraduates aloft, while mothers and auntswere left to the dignity of the Ladies' Circle below. Theyouths of the 'seventies were of many sorts and conditions,on their ways to the Bar, the Services, the Schools, theChurches, the new openings for academic life throughoutthe country, and some to be men of letters, and some tobe men of business and affairs, with a dwindling residuumof idle rich and idle poor. If the 'seventies was the decadeof Oscar Wilde (1874-8) the 'seventies was also thedecade of Cecil Rhodes (1874-81). Wilde was indeedtypical of one phase, or craze, of the moment. WalterPater's Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873)—a contribution not to historical science but to aestheticcriticism—had unwittingly set young Oxford, or a partof young Oxford, burning 'with a hard gem-like flame',and trying to undo its 'formed habits'—often very goodhabits formed at the Public Schools. But the Arts hadother votaries. John Ruskin had come back to Oxford,as first Slade Professor, with a more distinctly ethicalmessage; and on Tuesday, the 8th of February, 1870, theLarge Lecture Room at the New Museum was not largeenough to contain the huge crowd which assembled to