ho had been educated in the magnificent foundations of Wykeham
and Wolsey, of Henry the Sixth and Henry the Eighth. Literature and
science were, in the academical system of England, surrounded with
pomp, armed with magistracy, and closely allied with all the most august
institutions of the state. To be the Chancellor of an University was a
distinction eagerly sought by the magnates of the realm. To represent
an University in Parliament was a favourite object of the ambition
of statesmen. Nobles and even princes were proud to receive from an
University the privilege of wearing the doctoral scarlet. The curious
were attracted to the Universities by ancient buildings rich with the
tracery of the middle ages, by modern buildings which exhibited the
highest skill of Jones and Wren, by noble halls and chapels, by museums,
by botanical gardens, and by the only great public libraries which the
kingdom then contained. The state which Oxford especially displayed
on solemn occasions rivalled that of sovereign princes. When her
Chancellor, the venerable Duke of Ormond, sate in his embroidered mantle
on his throne under the painted ceiling of the Sheldonian theatre,
surrounded by hundreds of graduates robed according to their rank,
while the noblest youths of England were solemnly presented to him as
candidates for academical honours, he made an appearance scarcely
less regal than that which his master made in the Banqueting House of
Whitehall. At the Universities had been formed the minds of almost all
the eminent clergymen, lawyers, physicians, wits, poets, and orators of
the land, and of a large proportion of the nobility and of the opulent
gentry. It is also to be observed that the connection between the
scholar and the school did not terminate with his residence. He often
continued to be through life a member of the academical body, and to
vote as such at all important elections. He therefore regarded his old
haunts by the Cam and the Isis with even more than the affection which
educated men ordinarily feel for the place of their education. There
was no corner of England in which both Universities had not grateful and
zealous sons. Any attack on the honour or interests of either Cambridge
or Oxford was certain to excite the resentment of a powerful, active,
and intelligent class scattered over every county from Northumberland to
Cornwall.

The resident graduates, as a body, were perhaps not superior positively
to the resident g