things which they pointed out as absurdities had been done away with long before they wrote. In the second place, they were not competent, and therefore could not be impartial, judges of the subject under debate. Here were men comparatively ignorant of classical learning, attacking the study of the ancients; and hence the egregious blunder they all along exhibited to the wonder and derision of those who really were imbued with that sort of learning, the blunder, namely, of assuming, that young men could make themselves masters of the Greek and Roman authors without learning any thing but words. Words, if people knew what they were talking about, are not nothing; but the notion that a man could make himself thoroughly acquainted with the works of the greatest geniuses who have as yet enlightened the world in many, in almost all, of the most important branches of intellectual exertion; the notion that one could be a perfect master of the poets, the orators, the historians, and the philosophers of antiquity, and yet not know a vast deal besides words, was certainly a Scottish blunder sufficient of itself to take away from Ireland in eternum all claim to any thing like the monopoly of the most genuine breed of bulls. We shall say no more of this conflict, in which the party acting on the defensive did not, we think, manage their matters very judiciously; and of which they who provoked the strife have, we believe, lived to be thoroughly ashamed— although, while it raged, the praise of more expert gladiatorship could not well be denied to them. We hope we shall have no more of such squabblings among our literati,-bella nullos habitura triumphos.

We have sufficiently expressed our regret that so

small a portion of the English youth should directly profit by the noble apparatus of instruction which these two great universities present. But it would be ridiculous to deny, that the influence of the universities extends, even as things are, immensely beyond the mere circle of their alumni. These are dispersed throughout all the land; and unquestionably, not only in the church, but in the higher departments of every other profession, their attainments, their habits, and their opinions, exert a prodigious influence over the general character of intellect and accomplishment, fixing, in a great measure, every where the standard of acquirement, and the tone of thought and manners. The churchmen, who have not received academical education, are compelled to strain every nerve to come up with those who have; nay, the dissenting clergy themselves, partly as having had, in almost all their sects, clever schismatic churchmen for their founders, and still more as being under the necessity of maintaining every where a constant struggle with the clergy of the church, are, scarcely less than churchmen themselves, obliged to conform, or to endeavour to conform themselves, to the standard of erudition fixed among the churchmen by the universities.

In a word, the influence of these universities is felt wherever the English language is spoken. Their influence keeps the liberal professions from degenerating, in their higher walks at least, into trades,—of which, considering the extraordinary mixture of elements of which modern English society is made up, there might be no small danger. Their influence keeps up a certain purity of taste, in the midst of a literature exposed, on all sides but one, to innumerable

hazards of corruption. It presents a grave and graceful counterpoise to the danger of licentious innovations, inseparable from the literature of a nation so much engaged in foreign commerce as ours has long been, and, above all, of a nation in which, from the nature of their political institutions and habits, the reading public at large are so much exposed to have their taste debased by the ephemeral and never-ceasing lucubrations of persons whose principal object it always must be to flatter the multitude, and who, of course, accommodating without any great effort themselves, try also to bring down every thing, over which they have any control, to a low standard.

This beneficial influence, moreover, is very far from being limited to the departments of erudition and taste. It is felt, throughout the whole empire, in the deep sway which it exerts over the political feelings of those classes of society, whose sentiments as to such matters are of paramount importance now, and always must be so while the constitution retains its original character. We are not thinking of the two great old parties in the state as opposed to each other, but of these as, however little some of their partisans may agree with us, both, and, we are persuaded, almost equally in effect, opposed to the influence of the modern doctrines of the revolutionary school. So long as the gentlemen of England continue as a body to be educated as they now are, they must always retain at the bottom of their hearts, however they may sometimes appear, to superficial observers, to lose sight of it, the same profound and affectionate reverence for the inherited institutions that have made this nation what it is, by which they and their ancestors in every

age have been distinguished. The air of those venerable places is never breathed in vain by any young man, whose mind in after days is likely to make itself felt throughout England. The solemn antique aspect and observances of those hoary retreats imprint feelings, wherever the soil is generous, never to be eradicated or defaced by any thing that comes after; and the hour which witnesses the destruction of these nurseries of every thing that is graceful in scholarship, manly in manners, and noble and patriotic in sentiment, will, we devoutly believe, be not far distant from that in which the axe is at last laid to the root of the real glory of the intellect, the character, and the empire of England.

Having done justice to ourselves by this expression of our genuine feelings, in regard to these universities as they are, we hope we may now venture to return, without any danger of being misunderstood or misinterpreted, to the consideration of certain particulars, in which the practice of their discipline might, we humbly think, be altered for the better. We certainly should have felt much greater hesitation in doing this, had we not a firm conviction, that nothing is in reality needful, or even desirable, except that the practice of that discipline should be, in certain respects, brought into a more close and complete harmony with the spirit of its theory.

To come back, then, to the period of residence,there are two distinct circumstances which, even in the absence of all distinct historical record, would sufficiently prove the fact, that in the theory of these universities a term of residence much beyond what now obtains has been taken for granted.

In the first place, the statutes of the universitylibraries deny any right of using these libraries, except to students who have taken their first degree; which, the fashion of quitting college at the time of taking that first degree being now universal, amounts to little less than saying, that these magnificent libraries are not meant for the use of the great body of youth attending the universities. But could this have been contemplated by the founders of these libraries? Most certainly not. They restricted the use of their great collections to graduates, because they thought, and wisely thought, that, during the first years of his residence, the student, who ought to be engaged in mastering the ancient tongues, and the chief classics who have written in these, would be more likely to derive evil than good from having the doors of a boundless collection of all sorts of books perpetually thrown open to draw him from his own chambers.-We are not blaming the universities for their adherence to these rules,-particularly, as we are well aware, that when, in any special case, there is a good reason for relinquishing them, they make no difficulty about doing so; but, we say, the existence of such rules is of itself a sufficient evidence that the theory of the universities does not consider the residence of the great, the immeasurable majority of its alumni, as terminating with the fourth year of their matriculation.

Another circumstance, equally decisive as to the same matter, is found, as we humbly apprehend, in the existence of those numerous professorships in both universities, which are not at all connected with particular colleges, but constitute a separate apparatus altogether-an apparatus which, and here is the sub