sion of duty, and a defective,
ill-directed education.

It is impossible to read the biographies of some of
our most celebrated men, and not to see that with
means scanty enough they were enabled to keep their
terms with honour, and in the end confer additional
celebrity upon the noble foundations where they had
studied. If such be the case, we have only the result
of personal good or ill conduct to explain the whole of
the affair. But enough on this subject.

But it is not the venerable appearance of University
College, hallowed by the associations of so many
centuries in age, nor Queen's opposite, nor All Souls',
nor any other of the colleges as mere buildings, that so
connect them with our feelings. We must turn the
mind from stone and wood to the humanity in connection
with them. It is that which casts over them
the "religious light," speaking so sadly and sweetly to
the heart. In University College we see the glorious
name of Alfred, and nearly a thousand years, with their
perished annals, point to it as the witness of their
departed successions. Who on seeing New College
does not recall William of Wykeham? and then, what
a roll of proud names own this renowned university
for their Alma Mater. The very stones "prate of the
whereabout" of things connected with the development
of great minds, and while we look without fatigue at
the gorgeous mass of buildings in this university, we
feel we are contemplating what carries an intimate
connexion, in object at least, with that all of man which
marches in the track of eternity. It is not mere antiquity,
therefore, on which our reverence for a great
seminary of learning is founded. Priority of existence
has no solid claims to our regard, except for that verde
antique which covers it, as it covers all things past.
good or indifferent; it is the connexion of the foundation
with the history of man--with the names that, like
the flowers called "immortals," bloom amid the wrecks
and desolateness with which the flood of ages strew the
rearway of humankind.

Of late there has been small response to feelings
such as these in the great world, for we have not been
looking much toward what is above us, nor discriminating
from meaner things those which approach to
heroic natures. We must abandon Mammon, politics,
and polemics, when we would approach the threshold
of elevated meditation--when we dwell on the illustrious
names of the past, and tread over the stones which the