ardly ever those who defend the
common principles of Christianity, but those who volunteer to man the
out-works, and set up ingenious excuses for the questionable points, the
ticklish places in the established form of worship, that is, for those
which are attacked from without, and are supposed in danger of being
undermined by stratagem, or carried by assault!

The great resorts and seats of learning often outlive in this way the
intention of the founders as the world outgrows them. They may be said
to resemble antiquated coquettes of the last age, who think everything
ridiculous and intolerable but what was in fashion when they were young,
and yet are standing proofs of the progress of taste and the vanity
of human pretensions. Our universities are, in a great measure, become
cisterns to hold, not conduits to disperse knowledge. The age has the
start of them; that is, other sources of knowledge have been opened
since their formation, to which the world have had access, and have
drunk plentifully at those living fountains, but from which they are
debarred by the tenor of their charter, and as a matter of dignity
and privilege. They have grown poor, like the old grandees in some
countries, by subsisting on the inheritance of learning, while the
people have grown rich by trade. They are too much in the nature of
_fixtures_ in intellect: they stop the way in the road to truth; or
at any rate (for they do not themselves advance) they can only be
of service as a check-weight on the too hasty and rapid career of
innovation. All that has been invented or thought in the last two
hundred years they take no cognizance of, or as little as possible; they
are above it; they stand upon the ancient landmarks, and will not budge;
whatever was not known when they were first endowed, they are still in
profound and lofty ignorance of. Yet in that period how much has been
done in literature, arts, and science, of which (with the exception
of mathematical knowledge, the hardest to gainsay or subject to the
trammels of prejudice and barbarous _ipse dixits_) scarce any trace is
to be found in the authentic modes of study and legitimate inquiry
which prevail at either of our Universities! The unavoidable aim of
all corporate bodies of learning is not to grow wise, or teach others
wisdom, but to prevent any one else from being or seeming wiser than
themselves; in other words, their infallible tendency is in the end to
suppress inquiry and darke