OSCAR WILDE DISCIPLES.

The disciples of Oscar WILDE at Oxford University continue to have a bad time. Some months ago there was a pleasant little scene in an undergraduate's chambers. He happened to have aesthetic proclivities. He wore his hair long, and his rooms were not decorated with sporting scenes and portraits of burlesque actresses. The wrath of the undergraduates could not be contained. They broke into his chambers, smashed his furniture, and put himself under the pump. At the time this was supposed to be a phenomenal freak, which was not likely to occur again. But it appears that it has become a standing recreation at the University to bully the aesthetes and destroy their property.

"The usual course now is for a group of athletes, bull necked and but imperfectly educated, to visit the room of a known aesthete , and then and there to proceed to maul his pictures and all the little elegant conceits which make life at Oxford precious to him. They burn his incense and drink his claret in his absence; and if they do not duck him under the college pump it is because the unhappy youth, who has loved art fondly but too well, is concealing his trembling limbs elsewhere."

This has occurred recently in more than one college. The authorities have taken no steps to punish the offenders. They made some show of demanding guarantees for good behaviour, but the bull necked young "gentlemen" adopted such a threatening attitude that the "dons" were cowed , and nothing was done.

The athletic malcontents contended that as the aesthetic victim took no interest in their sports, they had a right to break his idols. This theory does not say much for the liberalising influence of University education. If lawlessness prevails at the seat of learning, what can be expected from an untutored mob?

To enter a man's room by force and deliberately ruin his possessions is an offence for which an ordinary person might have an unpleasant interview with a police magistrate. To be aesthetic may be very despicable, but it is at least more creditable than to act like a mad elephant. People who are appalled by the apparent growth of demoralisation in a large section of society, and by inadequacy of the precautions against crime and ruffianism, will not be comforted when they turn to Oxford University and find a number of young men who may in time to come exercise a serious influence on the world around them conducting themselves like so many drunken bargees.

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