e. The consequence
of this would be, that the honours decreed in a
university must be pernicious to youth. This cannot be
conceded. Sir Egerton's notion may be just in relation to
himself, or to one or two temperaments irregularly constituted;
but a university exists not for the exceptions, but for the
many. How numerous is the list of those who, but for the
fostering care of Oxford or Cambridge, would have never been
known as the ornament and delight of their fellow-men!
How much more numerous is the list of those, whose abilities
not rising beyond the circle of social usefulness have lived
"obscure to fame," yet owe the pleasure they imparted
to their friends, and the beguilement of many troubles
inseparable from mortality, to the fruits of their university
studies, and to a partial unrolling before them of that
map of knowledge, which before those of loftier claims
and some hold upon fame had been more amply displayed!
In this view of the matter, the justness of
which cannot be contested, the utility of such foundations
is boundless. The effect upon the social body.--
I do not speak of polemics, but of the sound instruction
thus made available--cannot be estimated. In the midst
of fluctuating systems of instruction, it is something to
have a standard by which to test the measure of
knowledge imparted to youth. If accused of being
restricted in variety of knowledge, the perfection and
mastery in what is taught must be conceded to Oxford
and Cambridge. Perhaps there is too much reason to
fear, that without these foundations we should speedily
fall into a very superficial knowledge, indeed, of the
classical languages of antiquity. This would be to
exclude ourselves from an acquaintance with all past time,
except in monkish fiction and the feudal barbarism of
the Goths of the north.

There are, I verily believe, or I should rather say
there were, imbibed at the university so many attachments
at one time to words in place of things, that the
collegian in after life became liable to reproach upon
this head. Pedants are bred everywhere out of literature,
and the variety in verbiage once exhibited by some
university men has been justly condemned. But while
such word-worms were crawling here and there out of
the porches of our colleges, giants in acquirement were
striding over them in their petty convolutions. Their
intertwinings attracted the attention of the mere gazer,
who is always more stricken with any microcos