he institute of the Oratory. In 1854 he went to Dublin for
four years as rector of the new Catholic university, and while there
wrote his volume on the "Idea of a University," in which he expounds
with wonderful clearness of thought and beauty of language his view of
the aim of education. In 1879 he was created cardinal in recognition
of his services to the cause of religion in England, and in 1890 he
died. Of the history of Newman's religious opinions and influence no
hint can be given here. The essays which follow do, indeed, imply
important and fundamental elements of his system of belief; but they
can be taken in detachment as the exposition of a view of the nature
and value of culture by a man who was himself the fine flower of
English university training and a master of English prose._

THE IDEA OF A UNIVERSITY

I. WHAT IS A UNIVERSITY?

If I were asked to describe as briefly and popularly as I could, what a
University was, I should draw my answer from its ancient designation of
a _Studium Generale_, or "School of Universal Learning." This
description implies the assemblage of strangers from all parts in one
spot;--_from all parts_; else, how will you find professors and
students for every department of knowledge? and _in one spot_; else,
how can there be any school at all? Accordingly, in its simple and
rudimental form, it is a school of knowledge of every kind, consisting
of teachers and learners from every quarter. Many things are requisite
to complete and satisfy the idea embodied in this description; but such
as this a University seems to be in its essence, a place for the
communication and circulation of thought, by means of personal
intercourse, through a wide extent of country.

There is nothing far-fetched or unreasonable in the idea thus presented
to us; and if this be a University, then a University does but
contemplate a necessity of our nature, and is but one specimen in a
particular medium, out of many which might be adduced in others, of a
provision for that necessity. Mutual education, in a large sense of
the word, is one of the great and incessant occupations of human
society, carried on partly with set purpose, and partly not. One
generation forms another; and the existing generation is ever acting
and reacting upon itself in the persons of its individual members.
Now, in this process, books, I need scarcely say, that is, the _litera
scripta_, are one special instrument. It i