183J.] The Silent Sister. 595 



College would be unjust, nor is their consideration relevant to our pre- 

 sent purpose. It is to another view of the subject to defects of another 

 kind, that we must direct our attention in this article. 



It is not enough that a richly endowed university should be an academy 

 for the discipline of youth, no matter how admirably adapted to that 

 purpose : its constitution will be deficient in a very material point, if it 

 fails to provide the nation with a perpetual supply of individuals, of 

 genius and capacity to extend the boundaries of knowledge, and placed 

 in such circumstances, as both to be induced and enabled to devote the 

 greater part of their time, and the whole vigour of their faculties, to that 

 high object. In this respect the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge 

 have answered with tolerable fidelity the end of their institution. The 

 College of Elizabeth wants this redeeming quality altogether; and in 

 this consists the true account of her low repute in the commonwealth of 

 letters. If we investigate the situation of the different members of which 

 the academic body is composed senior fellows, junior fellows, and 

 scholars we shall discover in the circumstances of each order amply 

 sufficient reasons to account for the " noiseless tenor of their way" in all 

 the walks of literature and science. Proceed we briefly to this exami- 

 nation. 



Of the scholars, albeit three-score and ten in number, little notice need 

 be taken. We say not this through any feeling of disrespect ; but be- 

 cause they are generally of that immature age, when learning exacts 

 homage, but does not expect advancement from her votaries; moreover, 

 their connection with the college ceases at the expiration of five years, 

 during which period they are continually distracted between preparation 

 for their several professions on the one hand, and the harassing attend- 

 ance on the other, of chapels without devotion, and lectures without 

 information. Nor is this all ; they want the qualification, as well as the 

 leisure to blazon the name of their alma mater chosen, as they are, to 

 their office, for no higher endowment than a superficial acquaintance with 

 but a meagre course of the Greek and Latin classics a better recom- 

 mendation to the post of usher to a grammar-school than claim to the 

 title of a man of letters. To the former eminence accordingly the as- 

 pirations of the scholar are not uiifrequently directed. Fitted for an 

 usher he becomes an usher, and he prizes his academic character only as 

 it is the means of raising him to that distinction. 



Pass we now to the junior fellows eighteen in number. We waive 

 the qualifications required from the candidates for that office we waive 

 the system of examination, the best that ingenuity could devise for ad- 

 mitting the dunce, and excluding the genius we waive the bounty it 

 gives to smatterers, and the little or no encouragement to that concentra- 

 tion of the faculties on a single object, which is so natural to talents, and 

 so essential to the formation of a high intellectual character all these 

 considerations we omit we pass by the candidate and proceed to con- 

 template the situation of the fellow. In the College of Dublin every 

 junior fellow is a tutor. The students are parcelled out amongst them 

 in greater or smaller shares, according to their characters and connec- 

 tions; or, as it too frequently happens, according to the success with 

 which a hundred little arts are practised upon parents, schoolmasters, 

 and the public. Some fill their chambers by the attractions of their own 

 tables ; some by their pleasantries at the tables of others ; some by their 

 unction in fashionable pulpits/ or at bible meetings ; one reverend gentle- 



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