The Oxford Man and the Cambridge Man
If stated very briefly, the chief difference may be said to be that the Cambridge man is more practical. Whether there is something in the method of training pursued, or whether the different degrees of importance assigned to the various branches of education may be the cause, or whether the pitting of man against man in examination may operate still more powerfully, the fact soon forces itself on the attention of all close observers. If two school-friends part, and meet again after spending a year at the respective universities, they are soon conscious that they no longer work exactly in the same way. The Cambridge student has learned to regard everything as a task which he must honestly and steadily get through. To do it, and not to think about it, is his aim. Still less does he occupy himself with thinking about doing it. He is too busy and methodical for the agreeable but delusive pleasure of secondary reflection. He has to master a subject, and all he cares is to master it, and to go through it, so that he may satisfy the practical test of being examined in it and answering creditably. When he leaves college and commences a profession, he works in the same way. A law student from Cambridge, for instance, has generally no very romantic views either of his profession or of himself. Here is a very complex, confused, various piece of learning which he has undertaken to acquire. To do the thing well, he must work hard, and must utterly disbelieve that any knowledge will come unless it is painfully obtained. He must cultivate a legal memory, note carefully up all that he thinks he ought to know, and prepare himself to be able to pass an imaginary examination at the shortest possible notice. The Oxford student, on the other hand, is more inclined to speculate about law, to dally with its details, and to despise its confusion. Cambridge men, so to speak, approach law in a humble attitude, and are consequently, perhaps, as a rule, better lawyers after the received English fashion. A boating man who has shaved through a pass at Cambridge, will probably read law precisely in the same way as a boating man who has shaved through a pass at Oxford. But if we compare the general body of men who have taken fair degrees or been accustomed to read, we shall find that there is a difference in the manner in which the one and the other set approach a subject like law, and that difference may fairly be described by saying that the Cambridge manner is the more practical.—Saturday Review.