great object, to
make its students "gentlemen," still to make them something or other _is_
its great object, and not simply to protect the interests and advance the
dominion of Science. If, then, this may be taken for granted, as I think
it may, the only point which remains to be settled is, whether I have
formed a probable conception of the _sort of benefit_ which the Holy See
has intended to confer on Catholics who speak the English tongue by
recommending to the Irish Hierarchy the establishment of a University; and
this I now proceed to consider.

Here, then, it is natural to ask those who are interested in the question,
whether any better interpretation of the recommendation of the Holy See
can be given than that which I have suggested in this Volume. Certainly it
does not seem to me rash to pronounce that, whereas Protestants have great
advantages of education in the Schools, Colleges, and Universities of the
United Kingdom, our ecclesiastical rulers have it in purpose that
Catholics should enjoy the like advantages, whatever they are, to the
full. I conceive they view it as prejudicial to the interests of Religion
that there should be any cultivation of mind bestowed upon Protestants
which is not given to their own youth also. As they wish their schools for
the poorer and middle classes to be at least on a par with those of
Protestants, they contemplate the same object also as regards that higher
education which is given to comparatively the few. Protestant youths, who
can spare the time, continue their studies till the age of twenty-one or
twenty-two; thus they employ a time of life all-important and especially
favourable to mental culture. I conceive that our Prelates are impressed
with the fact and its consequences, that a youth who ends his education at
seventeen is no match (_caeteris paribus_) for one who ends it at
twenty-two.

All classes indeed of the community are impressed with a fact so obvious
as this. The consequence is, that Catholics who aspire to be on a level
with Protestants in discipline and refinement of intellect have recourse
to Protestant Universities to obtain what they cannot find at home.
Assuming (as the Rescripts from Propaganda allow me to do) that Protestant
education is inexpedient for our youth,--we see here an additional reason
why those advantages, whatever they are, which Protestant communities
dispense through the medium of Protestantism should be accessible to
Catholics in a