Villino Trollope introduced us to "Owen Meredith," the poet from melody,--one far older in experience than in years, looking like his poetry, just so polished and graceful, just so sweetly in tune, just so Gallic in taste, and--shall we say it?--just so _blasé_! We doubt whether Robert Lytton, the diplomate, will ever realize the best aspirations of "Owen Meredith," the poet. Good came out of Nazareth, but it is not in our faith to believe that foreign courts can bear the rare fruit of ideal truth and beauty.--Then there was Blumenthal, the composer, who talked Buckle in admirable English, and played his own Reveries most daintily,--Reveries that are all languor, sighs, and tears, whose fitting home is the boudoirs of French marquises. Blumenthal is a Thalberg in small.--We have pleasant recollections of certain clever Oxonians, "Double-Firsts," potential in the classics and mathematics. A "Double-First" is the incarnation of Oxford, a masterpiece of Art. All that he knows he knows profoundly, nor does it require an Artesian bore to bring that knowledge bubbling to the surface. His mastery over his intellect is as great as that of Liszt over the piano-forte,--it is a slave to do his bidding. He is the result of a thousand years of culture. A "Double-First" never gives way to enthusiasms; his heart never gets into his head. Impulse is snubbed as though it were a poor relation; and argument is carried on by clear, acute reason, independent of feeling. Woe unto the American who loses his temper while duelling mentally with a "Double-First"! Oxford phlegm will triumph. Of course a "Double-First" is conservative; he disbelieves in republics and universal suffrage, attends the Established Church, and won't publicly deny the Thirty-Nine Articles, whatever maybe his _very_ private opinion of them. He writes brilliant articles for the "Saturday Review," (familiarly known among Liberals as the "Saturday Reviler,") and ends by being a learned and successful barrister, or a Gladstone, or both. Genius will rarely subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles. With all his conservatism and want of what the French call _effusion_, a "Double-First" can be a delightful companion and charming man,--even to a democratic American.