t is towards extravagance. Consequently, money is less of an advantage,
poverty less of a drawback than at the English universities; the
standard of living is more uniform; and in the society of which the
university is typical, and which it influences, respect for wealth as
wealth is noticeably rare. Again, the idea of education is more
disciplinary than in England. Irishmen go to college, not to acquire
culture by contact, but to learn certain definite things; and the
university, in its anxiety to find out if the task is being learnt,
multiplies examinations. The same idea pervades all Irish education--the
old-fashioned demand for a positive result in knowledge; and if it leads
to an excessive value set upon these tests, it also goes far to
discourage idleness.

In another matter Trinity College is typical of Irish ideas generally.
Games are simply taken as games, not as a main business of life in which
success may even have a marketable value. Everybody recognizes their
physical use, and more than that, their use as a means of bringing men
together. But nobody in Ireland, save here and there a stray apostle of
English notions, talks of the moral lessons to be acquired by fielding
out or by patient batting. Compulsory games at school are practically
unknown; nobody plays unless he wants to; so that the duffer does not
experience the questionable moral advantage of physical discomfort and
frequent humiliation, and the naturally painstaking or excellent athlete
gets no more than his fair chance of exercising his gifts. And these are
less likely to have an undue importance in their possessor's eyes,
because they will not of themselves lead him to a position of great
distinction in an Irish university.

Unfortunately, Trinity College is the only place in Ireland--unless
perhaps a saving clause should be made for Queen's College,
Belfast--which offers what is meant by a university life. The National
University, whether in Dublin, Cork or Galway, brings young men together
only in classes and in one or two debating societies. Yet even so, I
question whether, in some ways, life does not beat stronger in it than
in Trinity; whether the moral influences proper to a university, the
enthusiasm, the contagion of generous ideas, are not here more strongly
felt. The reason for this view must be given.

Trinity has never been the University of Ireland. It is ceasing to be
the University of Protestant Ireland, for Protestants, who ca