ration, when a _Stadium Generale_ is contemplated; for that
site should be a liberal and noble one; who will deny it? All
authorities agree in this, and very little reflection will be
sufficient to make it clear. I recollect a conversation I once had on
this very subject with a very eminent man. I was a youth of eighteen,
and was leaving my University for the Long Vacation, when I found
myself in company in a public conveyance with a middle-aged person,
whose face was strange to me. However, it was the great academical
luminary of the day, whom afterwards I knew very well. Luckily for me,
I did not suspect it; and luckily too, it was a fancy of his, as his
friends knew, to make himself on easy terms especially with stage-coach
companions. So, what with my flippancy and his condescension, I
managed to hear many things which were novel to me at the time; and one
point which he was strong upon, and was evidently fond of urging, was
the material pomp and circumstance which should environ a great seat of
learning. He considered it was worth the consideration of the
government, whether Oxford should not stand in a domain of its own. An
ample range, say four miles in diameter, should be turned into wood and
meadow, and the University should be approached on all sides by a
magnificent park, with fine trees in groups and groves and avenues, and
with glimpses and views of the fair city, as the traveller drew near
it. There is nothing surely absurd in the idea, though it would cost a
round sum to realise it. What has a better claim to the purest and
fairest possessions of nature, than the seat of wisdom? So thought my
coach companion; and he did but express the tradition of ages and the
instinct of mankind.

For instance, take the great University of Paris. That famous school
engrossed as its territory the whole south bank of the Seine, and
occupied one half, and that the pleasanter half, of the city. King
Louis had the island pretty well as his own,--it was scarcely more than
a fortification; and the north of the river was given over to the
nobles and citizens to do what they could with its marshes; but the
eligible south, rising from the stream, which swept around its base, to
the fair summit of St. Genevieve, with its broad meadows, its vineyards
and its gardens, and with the sacred elevation of Montmartre
confronting it, all this was the inheritance of the University. There
was that pleasant Pratum, stretching al