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or the lecture room will assist us greatly, but we must be true to ourselves, we must be parties in the work. A university is, according to the usual designation, [920 an alma mater, knowing her children one by one, not a foundry, or a mint, or a treadmill.

I protest to you, gentlemen, that if I had to choose between a so-called university, which dispensed with residence and tutorial superintendence, and gave its degrees to any person who passed an examination in a wide range of subjects, and a university which had no pro- [930 fessors or examinations at all, but merely brought a number of young men together for three or four years, and then sent them away as the University of Oxford is said to have done some sixty years since, if I were asked which of these two methods was the better discipline of the intellect,―mind, I do not say which is morally the better, for it is plain that compulsory study must be a good [940 and idleness an intolerable mischief,but if I must determine which of the two courses was the more successful in training, molding, enlarging the mind, which sent out men the more fitted for their secular duties, which produced better public men, men of the world, men whose names would descend to posterity, I have no hesitation in giving the preference to that university which did nothing, [950 over that which exacted of its members an acquaintance with every science under the sun. And, paradox as this may seem, still if results be the test of systems, the influence of the public schools and colleges of England, in the course of the last century, at least will bear out one side of the contrast as I have drawn it. What would come, on the other hand, of the ideal systems of education which [960 have fascinated the imagination of this age, could they ever take effect, and whether they would not produce a generation frivolous, narrow-minded, and resourceless, intellectually considered, is a fair subject for debate; but so far is certain, that the universities and scholastic establishments, to which I refer, and which did little more than bring together first boys and then youths in large [970

numbers, these institutions, with miserable deformities on the side of morals, with a hollow profession of Christianity, and a heathen code of ethics,-I say, at least they can boast of a succession of heroes and statesmen, of literary men and philosophers, of men conspicuous for great natural virtues, for habits of business, for knowledge of life, for practical judgment, for cultivated tastes, for [980 accomplishments, who have made England what it is,-able to subdue the earth, able to domineer over Catholics.

How is this to be explained? I suppose as follows: When a multitude of young men, keen, open-hearted, sympathetic, and observant, as young men are, come together and freely mix with each other, they are sure to learn one from another, even if there be no one to [990 teach them; the conversation of all is a series of lectures to each, and they gain for themselves new ideas and views, fresh matter of thought, and distinct principles for judging and acting, day by day. An infant has to learn the meaning of the information which its senses convey to it, and this seems to be its employment. It fancies all that the eye presents to it to be close to it, till it actually learns [1000 the contrary, and thus by practice does it ascertain the relations and uses of those first elements of knowledge which are necessary for its animal existence. parallel teaching is necessary for our social being, and it is secured by a large school or a college; and this effect may be fairly called in its own department an enlargement of mind. It is seeing the world on a small field with little trouble; for the [1010 pupils or students come from very different places, and with widely different notions, and there is much to generalize, much to adjust, much to eliminate; there are inter-relations to be defined, and conventional rules to be established, in the process by which the whole assemblage is molded together, and gains one tone and one character.

Α

Let it be clearly understood, I re- [1020 peat it, that I am not taking into account moral or religious considerations; I am but saying that that youthful community will constitute a whole, it will embody a

specific idea, it will represent a doctrine, it will administer a code of conduct, and it will furnish principles of thought and action. It will give birth to a living teaching, which in course of time will take the shape of a self-perpetuating [1030 tradition, or a genius loci, as it is sometimes called; which haunts the home where it has been born, and which imbues and forms more or less, and one by one, every individual who is successively brought under its shadow. Thus it is Thus it is that, independent of direct instruction on the part of superiors, there is a sort of self-education in the academic institutions of protestant England; a char- [1040 acteristic tone of thought, a recognized standard of judgment is found in them, which as developed in the individual who is submitted to it, becomes a twofold source of strength to him, both from the distinct stamp it impresses on his mind, and from the bond of union which it creates between him and others,-effects which are shared by the authorities of the place, for they themselves have [1050 been educated in it, and at all times are exposed to the influence of its ethical atmosphere. Here then is a real teaching, whatever be its standards and principles, true or false; and it at least tends towards cultivation of the intellect; it at least recognizes that knowledge is something more than a sort of passive reception of scraps and details; it is a something, and it does a something, which never will [1060 issue from the most strenuous efforts of a set of teachers, with no mutual sympathies and no intercommunion, of a set of examiners with no opinions which they dare profess, and with no common principles, who are teaching or questioning a set of youths who do not know them, and do not know each other, on a large number of subjects, different in kind, and connected by no wide philosophy, [1070 three times a week, or three times a year, or once in three years, in chill lecture rooms or on a pompous anniversary.

Nay, self-education in any shape, in the most restricted sense, is preferable to a system of teaching which, professing so much, really does so little for the mind. Shut your college gates against

the votary of knowledge, throw him back upon the searchings and the efforts [1080 of his own mind; he will gain by being spared an entrance into your babel. Few indeed there are who can dispense with the stimulus and support of instructors, or will do anything at all, if left to themselves. And fewer still (though such great minds are to be found,) who will not, from such unassisted attempts, contract a self-reliance and a self-esteem, which are not only moral evils, but [1090 serious hindrances to the attainment of truth. And next to none, perhaps, or none, who will not be reminded from time to time of the disadvantage under which they lie, by their imperfect grounding, by the breaks, deficiencies, and irregularities of their knowledge, by the eccentricity of opinion and the confusion of principle which they exhibit. They will be too often ignorant of what every [1100 one knows and takes for granted, of that multitude of small truths which fall upon the mind like dust, impalpable and ever accumulating; they may be unable to converse, they may argue perversely, they may pride themselves on their worst paradoxes or their grossest truisms, they may be full of their own mode of viewing things, unwilling to be put out of their way, slow to enter into the minds [1110 of others; but, with these and whatever other liabilities upon their heads, they are likely to have more thought, more mind, more philosophy, more true enlargement, than those earnest but illused persons, who are forced to load their minds with a score of subjects against an examination, who have too much on their hands to indulge themselves in thinking or investigation, who devour [1120 premise and conclusion together with indiscriminate greediness, who hold whole sciences on faith, and commit demonstrations to memory, and who too often, as might be expected, when their period of education is passed, throw up all they have learned in disgust, having gained nothing really by their anxious labors, except perhaps the habit of application.

Yet such is the better specimen of [1130 the fruit of that ambitious system which has of late years been making way among

us; for its result on ordinary minds, and on the common run of students, is less satisfactory still; they leave their place of education simply dissipated and relaxed by the multiplicity of subjects which they have never really mastered, and so shallow as not even to know their shallowness. How much better, I [1140 say, is it for the active and thoughtful intellect, where such is to be found, to eschew the college and the university altogether, than to submit to a drudgery so ignoble, a mockery so contumelious! How much more profitable for the independent mind, after the mere rudiments of education, to range through a library at random, taking down books as they meet him, and pursuing the [1150 trains of thought which his mother wit suggests! How much healthier to wander into the fields, and there with the exiled prince to find "tongues in the trees, books in the running brooks"! How much more genuine an education is that of the poor boy in the poem-a poem, whether in conception or in execution, one of the most touching in our language who, not in the wide world, but ranging day by day [1160 around his widowed mother's home, "a dexterous gleaner" in a narrow field, and with only such slender outfit

"As the village school and books a few Supplied,"

contrived from the beach, and the quay, and the fisher's boat, and the inn's fireside, and the tradesman's shop, and the shepherd's walk, and the smuggler's hut, and the mossy moor, and the scream- [1170 ing gulls, and the restless waves, to fashion for himself a philosophy and a poetry of his own!

But in a large subject, I am exceeding my necessary limits. Gentlemen, I must conclude abruptly; and postpone any summing up of my argument, should that be necessary, to another day.

From the APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA

KINGSLEY AND NEWMAN

Mr. Kingsley begins then by exclaiming,-"O the chicanery, the wholesale

fraud, the vile hypocrisy, the consciencekilling tyranny of Rome! We have not far to seek for an evidence of it! There's Father Newman, to wit: one living specimen is worth a hundred dead ones. He, a priest, writing of priests, tells us that lying is never any harm."

I interpose: "You are taking a most [10 extraordinary liberty with my name. If I have said this, tell me when and where."

Mr. Kingsley replies: "You said it, Reverend Sir, in a sermon which you preached, when a Protestant, as Vicar of St. Mary's, and published in 1844; and I could read you a very salutary lecture on the effects which that sermon had at the time on my own opinion of you." [20 I make answer: "Oh.. Not, it seems, as a priest speaking of priests; but let us have the passage."

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Mr. Kingsley relaxes: "Do you know, I like your tone. From your tone, I rejoice, greatly rejoice, to be able to believe that you did not mean what you said."

I rejoin: "Mean it! I maintain I never said it, whether as a Protestant or as a Catholic." [30

Mr. Kingsley replies: "I waive that point."

I object: "Is it possible? What? waive the main question! I either said it or I didn't. You have made a monstrous charge against me: direct, distinct, public. You are bound to prove it as directly, as distinctly, as publicly; or to own you can't!"

"Well," says Mr. Kingsley, "if you [40 are quite sure you did not say it, I'll take your word for it; I really will."

My word! I am dumb. Somehow I thought that it was my word that happened to be on trial. The word of a Professor of lying, that he does not lie!

But Mr. Kinglsey reassures me: "We are both gentlemen," he says: "I have done as much as one English gentle- [50 man can expect from another."

I begin to see: he thought me a gentleman at the very time that he said I taught lying on system. After all, it is not I, but Mr. Kingsley who did not mean what he said.

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She gazed and listened and then said, Is sometimes felt to be, Less sad of speech than mild,— While every leaf that His plumes touch "All this is when he comes." Saith His Name audibly.

"And I myself will teach to him,

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She ceased.
The light thrilled towards her, filled
With angels in strong level flight.
Her eyes prayed, and she smiled.

(I saw her smile.) But soon their path
Was vague in distant spheres:
And then she cast her arms along
The golden barriers,

And laid her face between her hands,
And wept. (I heard her tears.)

SISTER HELEN

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