200 UNIVERSITIES: ACTUAL AND IDEAL viii 



relation to the Papacy; and, with all respect for 

 his Grace, I think I may say that we both look 

 terribly shrunken when compared with our great 

 originals. 



Not so is it with the second foreign element, 

 which silently dropped into the soil of Univer- 

 sities, like the grain of mustard-seed in the para- 

 ble; and, like that grain, grew into a tree, in 

 whose branches a whole aviary of fowls took shel- 

 ter. That element is the element of Endowment. 

 It differed from the preceding, in its original de- 

 sign to serve as a prop to the young plant, not 

 to be a parasite upon it. The charitable and the 

 humane, blessed with wealth, were very early pene- 

 trated by the misery of the poor student. And 

 the wise saw that intellectual ability is not so 

 common or so unimportant a gift that it should 

 be allowed to run to waste upon mere handicrafts 

 and chares. The man who was a blessing to his 

 contemporaries, but who so often has been con- 

 verted into a curse, by the blind adherence of his 

 posterity to the letter, rather than to the spirit, 

 of his wishes — I mean the " pious founder " — 

 gave money and lands, that the student, who was 

 rich in brain and poor in all else, might be taken 

 from the plough or from the stithy, and enabled 

 to devote himself to the higher service of man- 

 kind; and built colleges and halls in which he 

 might be not only housed and fed, but taught. 



The Colleges were very generally placed in 



