ecting bodies, the fellows in each perpetually filling
up for themselves the vacancies which occur in their number, the members
of this foundation determined, at a time when, either from evil custom or
from ancient statute, such a thing was not known elsewhere, to throw open
their fellowships to the competition of all comers, and, in the choice of
associates henceforth, to cast to the winds every personal motive and
feeling, family connexion, and friendship, and patronage, and political
interest, and local claim, and prejudice, and party jealousy, and to elect
solely on public and patriotic grounds. Nay, with a remarkable
independence of mind, they resolved that even the table of honours,
awarded to literary merit by the University in its new system of
examination for degrees, should not fetter their judgment as electors; but
that at all risks, and whatever criticism it might cause, and whatever
odium they might incur, they would select the men, whoever they were, to
be children of their Founder, whom they thought in their consciences to be
most likely from their intellectual and moral qualities to please him, if
(as they expressed it) he were still upon earth, most likely to do honour
to his College, most likely to promote the objects which they believed he
had at heart. Such persons did not promise to be the disciples of a low
Utilitarianism; and consequently, as their collegiate reform synchronized
with that reform of the Academical body, in which they bore a principal
part, it was not unnatural that, when the storm broke upon the University
from the North, their Alma Mater, whom they loved, should have found her
first defenders within the walls of that small College, which had first
put itself into a condition to be her champion.

These defenders, I have said, were two, of whom the more distinguished was
the late Dr. Copleston, then a Fellow of the College, successively its
Provost, and Protestant Bishop of Llandaff. In that Society, which owes so
much to him, his name lives, and ever will live, for the distinction which
his talents bestowed on it, for the academical importance to which he
raised it, for the generosity of spirit, the liberality of sentiment, and
the kindness of heart, with which he adorned it, and which even those who
had least sympathy with some aspects of his mind and character could not
but admire and love. Men come to their meridian at various periods of
their lives; the last years of the eminent