mit with its splendour and its sweetness, ask wistfully, if
never again it is to be Catholic, or whether at least some footing for
Catholicity may not be found there. All honour and merit to the
charitable and zealous hearts who so inquire! Nor can we dare to tell
what in time to come may be the inscrutable purposes of that grace,
which is ever more comprehensive than human hope and aspiration. But
for me, from the day I left its walls, I never, for good or bad, have
had anticipation of its future; and never for a moment have I had a
wish to see again a place, which I have never ceased to love, and where
I lived for nearly thirty years. Nay, looking at the general state of
things at this day, I desiderate for a School of the Church, if an
additional School is to be granted to us, a more central position than
Oxford has to show. Since the age of Alfred and of the first Henry,
the world has grown, from the west and south of Europe, into four or
five continents; and I look for a city less inland than that old
sanctuary, and a country closer upon the highway of the seas. I look
towards a land both old and young; old in its Christianity, young in
the promise of its future; a nation, which received grace before the
Saxon came to Britain, and which has never quenched it; a Church, which
comprehends in its history the rise and fall of Canterbury and York,
which Augustine and Paulinus found, and Pole and Fisher left behind
them. I contemplate a people which has had a long night, and will have
an inevitable day. I am turning my eyes towards a hundred years to
come, and I dimly see the island I am gazing on, become the road of
passage and union between two hemispheres, and the centre of the world.
I see its inhabitants rival Belgium in populousness, France in vigour,
and Spain in enthusiasm; and I see England taught by advancing years to
exercise in its behalf that good sense which is her characteristic
towards every one else. The capital of that prosperous and hopeful
land is situate in a beautiful bay and near a romantic region; and in
it I see a flourishing University, which for a while had to struggle
with fortune, but which, when its first founders and servants were dead
and gone, had successes far exceeding their anxieties. Thither, as to
a sacred soil, the home of their fathers, and the fountain-head of
their Christianity, students are flocking from East, West, and South,
from America and Australia and India, from E