rd professors are secure in the enjoyment of a
fixed stipend, without the necessity of labour, or the apprehension of
controul. It has indeed been observed, nor is the observation absurd,
that excepting in experimental sciences, which demand a costly apparatus
and a dexterous hand, the many valuable treatises, that have been
published on every subject of learning, may now supersede the ancient
mode of oral instruction. Were this principle true in its utmost
latitude, I should only infer that the offices and salaries, which are
become useless, ought without delay to be abolished. But there still
remains a material difference between a book and a professor; the hour
of the lecture enforces attendance; attention is fixed by the presence,
the voice, and the occasional questions of the teacher; the most idle
will carry something away; and the more diligent will compare the
instructions, which they have heard in the school, with the volumes,
which they peruse in their chamber. The advice of a skilful professor
will adapt a course of reading to every mind and every situation; his
authority will discover, admonish, and at last chastise the negligence
of his disciples; and his vigilant inquiries will ascertain the steps of
their literary progress. Whatever science he professes he may illustrate
in a series of discourses, composed in the leisure of his closet,
pronounced on public occasions, and finally delivered to the press. I
observe with pleasure, that in the university of Oxford Dr. Lowth,
with equal eloquence and erudition, has executed this task in his
incomparable Praelections on the Poetry of the Hebrews.

The college of St. Mary Magdalen was founded in the fifteenth century by
Wainfleet, bishop of Winchester; and now consists of a president, forty
fellows, and a number of inferior students. It is esteemed one of the
largest and most wealthy of our academical corporations, which may be
compared to the Benedictine abbeys of Catholic countries; and I have
loosely heard that the estates belonging to Magdalen College, which are
leased by those indulgent landlords at small quit-rents and occasional
fines, might be raised, in the hands of private avarice, to an annual
revenue of nearly thirty thousand pounds. Our colleges are supposed to
be schools of science, as well as of education; nor is it unreasonable
to expect that a body of literary men, devoted to a life of celibacy,
exempt from the care of their own subsistence, and a