niment, are suitable to the end.
There is religion or its sentiment addressing the mind
here through every sense. All that can raise devotion
in external appliances, combines in a wonderful manner;
and when the sound of the organ is reverberated deeply
along the vaulted roofs and walls, the effect was
indescribably fine. Christchurch walk or meadow is an
adjunct to this college, such as few places possess. I
have trod it with those who will never tread it again. I
have skimmed over its smooth shaven surface when life
seemed a vista of unmeasured years. Its very beauty
touches upon a melancholy chord, since it vibrates the
sound of time passed away with those who lie in dust in
distant climates, of whom memory alone is now the only
record that they were and are not.
I remember being told by an eminent, but aged
doctor in divinity, who had been the better part of his
life employed in the education of youth, that he had
kept an account of the history of all his pupils as far as
he could obtain it, and they were very numerous. From
his own tuition--and there were some celebrated names
amongst them--he traced them to the university, or to
professions of a more active nature than a sojourn
at the university would allow. To Oxford he had
sent the larger number of his pupils. "And afterwards,
doctor?" "Some came off nobly there: others
I heard of in distant parts of the globe in their country's
service: but it is the common tale with nearly all of
them--they are dead." What hosts, I often thought,
who had moved among, the deep shades of this university
until it became entwined with their earliest affections
--who had studied within those embattled walls until
the sight of them became almost a part of his existence
--what hosts of such have but served to swell the
waters of oblivion, and press the associations of a
common mortality upon the mind in the reflection on
this very truism! The late Sir Egerton Brydges--a
writer whose talents, though admitted, were never
received as they merited to have been by the world,
owing, perhaps, to an untoward disposition in other
respects--was of opinion that the calmness and
seclusion of a university were not best adapted for calling
forth the efforts of genius; but that adversity and some
struggling were necessary to bring out greatness of
character. He thought that praise enervated the mind,
and that to bear it required a much greater degree of
fortitude than to withstand censur
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