ISO ROUGH WAYS MADE SMOOTH. 



their want of success in a sufficiently satisfactory manner. 

 The successive defeats sustained by the Cambridge crews in 

 1861-69 are therefore so much the less readily explained as 

 due to mere accident, by which of course I mean simply 

 such an accidental circumstance as that better oarsmen 

 chanced to be at Oxford than at Cambridge in these years, 

 not to accident occurring in the race itself. 



Several reasons were assigned from time to time for the 

 repeated victories of Oxford. Some of these may con- 

 veniently be examined here, before discussing what I take 

 to be the true explanation. 



Some writers in the papers advanced the general proposi* 

 tion that Oxford men are as a rule stronger and more 

 enduring than Cambridge men. They did not tell us why 

 this should be the case to what peculiar influences it was 

 due that the more powerful and energetic of our English 

 youth should go to one university rather than the other. 

 No evidence of this peculiarity could be found in the 

 university athletic sports, in which success was, as it has 

 since been, very equally divided. And what made the 

 theory the less satisfactory was the circumstance that it 

 afforded no explanation of the early triumphs of the Cantabs, 

 who won seven of the nine races they rowed against Oxford. 

 Of these races five were rowed from Westminster to Putney, 

 a course two miles longer than the present course from 

 Putney to Mortlake. A race over such a course and in the 

 heavier old-fashioned racing-boats was a sufficient test of 

 strength and endurance ; yet the Cambridge men managed 

 to win four out of these five events, and that not by a few 

 seconds, but in three instances by upwards of a minute. If 

 there were any reason for conceiving that Oxonians were 

 as a rule stronger than Cantabs in the years 1861-69, 

 there is at least no reason for conceiving that any change 

 can have taken place in the time between the earlier races 

 and that during which Oxford won so persistently. And as 

 the earlier races show no traces of any difference such as 

 was insisted upon by many journalists in the latter part of 



