ich they took of
the whole subject of Liberal Education; and the defence thus provided for
the Oxford studies has kept its ground to this day.

3.

Let me be allowed to devote a few words to the memory of distinguished
persons, under the shadow of whose name I once lived, and by whose
doctrine I am now profiting. In the heart of Oxford there is a small plot
of ground, hemmed in by public thoroughfares, which has been the
possession and the home of one Society for above five hundred years. In
the old time of Boniface the Eighth and John the Twenty-second, in the age
of Scotus and Occam and Dante, before Wiclif or Huss had kindled those
miserable fires which are still raging to the ruin of the highest
interests of man, an unfortunate king of England, Edward the Second,
flying from the field of Bannockburn, is said to have made a vow to the
Blessed Virgin to found a religious house in her honour, if he got back in
safety. Prompted and aided by his Almoner, he decided on placing this
house in the city of Alfred; and the Image of our Lady, which is opposite
its entrance-gate, is to this day the token of the vow and its fulfilment.
King and Almoner have long been in the dust, and strangers have entered
into their inheritance, and their creed has been forgotten, and their holy
rites disowned; but day by day a memento is still made in the holy
Sacrifice by at least one Catholic Priest, once a member of that College,
for the souls of those Catholic benefactors who fed him there for so many
years. The visitor, whose curiosity has been excited by its present fame,
gazes perhaps with something of disappointment on a collection of
buildings which have with them so few of the circumstances of dignity or
wealth. Broad quadrangles, high halls and chambers, ornamented cloisters,
stately walks, or umbrageous gardens, a throng of students, ample
revenues, or a glorious history, none of these things were the portion of
that old Catholic foundation; nothing in short which to the common eye
sixty years ago would have given tokens of what it was to be. But it had
at that time a spirit working within it, which enabled its inmates to do,
amid its seeming insignificance, what no other body in the place could
equal; not a very abstruse gift or extraordinary boast, but a rare one,
the honest purpose to administer the trust committed to them in such a way
as their conscience pointed out as best. So, whereas the Colleges of
Oxford are self-el