thers that superiority which they never
boast indeed, but to which his secret soul bears envious witness. Or the
rich nonconformist, risen perhaps from obscurity to a rank in society,
indulging either his spleen or his pride--either to send his eldest son
as a gentleman-commoner to Christ-Church, to swallow the Thirty-nine
Articles with his champagne; or to have his fling at the Church through
her universities--accusing Churchmen of bigotry, and exclusiveness, and
illiberality, because Dissenters do not found colleges.[2] Or, worse
than all, the unworthy disciple who (like the noxious plant that has
grown up beneath the shade of some goodly tree) has drawn no nobility of
soul from the associations which surrounded his ungrateful youth: for
whom all the reality and romance of academic education were alike in
vain: sneering at the honours which he could not obtain, denying the
existence of opportunities which he neglected; the basest of approvers,
he quotes to his own eternal infamy the scenes of riot and dissipation,
the alternations of idleness and extravagance, which make up his sole
recollections of the university: and looking, without one glance of
affection, upon the face of his fair and graceful mother, makes the
chance mole, or the early wrinkle, which he traces there, the subject of
his irreverent jest, forgets the kindness of which he was unworthy, and
remembers for evil the wholesome discipline which was irksome only to
such as him.

"Non haec jocosae conveniunt lyrae;"

I admit mine is not the tongue or pen for such a subject; and Oxford
has, I hope, no lack of abler champions. But it was geese, you know, who
once saved the Capitol; and I must have my hiss at the iniquitous
quackeries which people seek to perpetrate under the taking title of
University Reform. And when I, loving Oxford as I do, see some of her
own sons arrayed against her, I can only remember this much of my
philosophy--that there are cases when to be angry becomes a duty. Men
who, knowing nothing of the universities from experience, think proper
to run them down, succeed at all events in exposing one crying evil--the
absurdity of meddling with what one does not understand. We who know
better may afford to smile at once at their spite and their ignorance.
But he who lifts his voice against the mother that bore him, can fix no
darker blot upon her fame than the disgrace of having given birth to
him.

Show me the man who did not like Oxf