University," and that "with the consent and assent of our chapters of Holy Trinity and St. Patrick." I think I am correct in saying, though I write without book, that he makes no mention of a Rector. If not, the Chancellor probably, whom he does mention, took his place, or was his synonyme, as in some other Universities. This Chancellor the Regent Masters were to have the privilege of choosing, with a proviso that he was a "Doctor in sacrâ paginâ," or in "jure canonico," with a preference of members of the two chapters. He was to take the oath of fidelity to the Archbishop. The Regent Masters elected the Proctors also, who were two in number, and who supplied the place of the Chancellor in his absence. The Chancellor was invested with jurisdiction over the members of the University, and had a court, to which causes belonged in which they were concerned. There was, moreover, a University chest, supplied by means of the fines which were the result of his decisions. Degrees were to be conferred upon certificate of the Masters of the Faculty, in which the candidate was proceeding. Statutes were to be passed by the Chancellor, in council of Masters Regent and Nonregent, subject to the confirmation of the Archbishop. The Schools of the Friars Preachers (or Dominicans) and of the Minorites (or Franciscans) were recognized in their connection with the University, the Archbishop reserving to himself the right of appointing a Lecturer in Holy Scripture.

Such was the encouraging and hopeful start of the University; the Dean of St. Patrick was advanced to the Doctorate in Canon Law, and was created its first Chancellor; its first Doctors in Theology were two Dominicans and one Franciscan. The Canons of the Cathedral seem to have been its acting members, and

filled the offices of a place of education without prejudicing their capitular duties. However, it soon appeared that there was somewhere a hitch, and the work did not make progress. It has been supposed with reason, that under the unhappy circumstances of the time, the University could not make head against the necessary difficulties of a commencement. Another and more definite cause which is assigned for the failure, is the want of funds. The Irish people were poor, and unable to meet the expenses involved in the establishment of a great seat of learning, at a time when other similar institutions already existed. The time had passed when Universities grew up out of the enthusiasm of teachers and the curiosity and eagerness of students; or, if these causes still were in operation, they had been directed and flowed in upon seats of learning already existing in other countries. It was the age of national schools, of colleges and endowments; and, though the civil power appeared willing to take its part in endowments in furtherance of the new undertaking, it did not go much further than to enrich it now and then with a stray lectureship, and wealthy prelates or nobles were not forthcoming in that age, capable of conceiving and executing works in the spirit of Ximenes two centuries afterwards in Spain.

Yet down to the very time of Ximenes, and beyond it, continual and praiseworthy efforts were made, on the part both of the Church and of the State, to accomplish a work which was important in proportion to its difficulty. In 1358 the clergy and scholars of Ireland represented to Edward the Third the necessity under which they lay of cultivating theology, canon law, and the other clerical sciences, and the serious impediments in the way of these studies which lay in the expense of travel

and the dangers of the sea to those who had no Univer sity of their own. In answer to this request, the king seems to have founded a lectureship in theology; and he indirectly encouraged the University schools by issuing his letters-patent, giving special protection and safeconduct to English as well as Irish, of whatever degree, with their servants and attendants, their goods and habiliments, in going, residing, and returning. A few years later, in 1364, Lionel, Duke of Clarence, founded a preachership and lectureship in the Cathedral, to be held by an Augustinian.

A further attempt in behalf of a University was made a century later. In 1465, the Irish Parliament, under the presidency of Thomas Geraldine, Earl of Desmond, Vicegerent of George, Duke of Clarence, Lieutenant of the English King, had erected a University at Drogheda, and endowed it with the privileges of the University of Oxford. This attempt, however, in like manner was rendered abortive by the want of funds; but it seems to have suggested a new effort in favour of the elder institution at Dublin, which at this time could scarcely be said to exist. Ten years after the Parliament in question, the Dominican and other friars preferred a supplication to Pope Sixtus the Fourth, in which they represent that in Ireland there is no University to which Masters, Doctors of Law, and Scholars may resort; that it is necessary to go to England at a great expense and peril; and consequently they ask for leave to erect a University in the metropolitan city. The Pope granted their request, and, though nothing followed, the attempt is so far satisfactory, as evidencing the perseverance of the Irish clergy in aiming at what they felt to be a benefit of supreme importance to their country.

Nor was this the last of such attempts, nor were the

secular behind the regular clergy in zeal for a University. As late as the reign of Henry the Seventh, in the year 1496, Walter Fitzsimon, Archbishop of Dublin, in provincial Synod, settled an annual contribution to be levied for seven years in order to provide salaries for the Lecturers. And, though we have no record, I believe, of the effect of this measure, yet, when the chapter was reëstablished in the reign of Philip and Mary, the allusion made in the legal instrument to the loss which the youthful members of society had sustained in its suppression, may be taken to show, that certain scholastic benefits had resulted from its stalls though the education which they provided was not of that character which the name of a University demanded.

Times are changed since these attempts were made; and, while the causes no longer exist which operated in their failure, the object towards which they were directed has attained a moment, both in itself and in its various bearings, which could never have been predicted in the fourteenth or the sixteenth century. Ireland is no longer the conquered possession of a foreign king: it is, as in the primitive times, the centre of a great Catholic movement and of a world-wide missionary enterprise. Nor does the Holy See simply lend an ear to the project of others: it originates the undertaking.

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CHAPTER XVIII.

COLLEGES THE CORRECTIVE OF UNIVERSITIES.

COL

OXFORD.

OLLEGES, and Colleges for the advancement of science, were not altogether a medieval idea. To say nothing else, it is obvious to refer to the Museum of the Ptolemies at Alexandria, of which I spoke in an earlier Chapter. The Saracens too founded Colleges for learned education at Cordova, Granada, and Malaga; and these obtained a great reputation. Yet it is an idea, which has been brought out and familiarized in history, and recognized in political institutions, and completed in its parts, during the era of Universities, with a fulness which almost allows us to claim it as belonging to the new civilization. By a College, I suppose, is meant, not merely a body of men living together in one dwelling, but belonging to one establishment. In its very notion, the word suggests to us position, authority, and stability; and again, these attributes presuppose a foundation; and that foundation consists either in public recognition, or in the possession of revenues, or in some similar advantage. If two or three individuals live together, the community is not at once called a College; but a charter, or an ndowment, some legal status, or some ecclesiastical rivilege, is necessary to erect it into the Collegiate >rm. However, it does, I suppose, imply a community