UNIVERSITIES : ACTUAL AND IDEAL. 47 



I need not tell you that your late lord rector took this view of his 

 position, and acted upon it with the comprehensive, far-seeing insight 

 into the actual condition and tendencies, not merely of his own, but 

 of other countries, which is his honorable characteristic among states- 

 men. I have already done my best, and, as long as I hold my office, I 

 shall continue to endeavor, to follow in the path which he trod ; to 

 do what in me lies to bring this university nearer to the ideal — alas ! 

 that I should be obliged to say ideal — of all universities ; which, as 

 I conceive, should be places in which thought is free from all fetters ; 

 and in which all sources of knowledge, and all aids to learning, should 

 be accessible to all comers, without distinction of creed or country, 

 riches or poverty. 



Do not suppose, however, that I am sanguine enough to expect 

 much to come of any poor efforts of mine. If your annals take any 

 notice of my incumbency, I shall probably go down to posterity as 

 the rector who was always beaten. But if they add, as I think they 

 will, that my defeats became victories in the hands of my successors, 

 I shall be well content. 



The scenes are shifting in the great theatre of the world. The 

 act which commenced with the Protestant Reformation is nearly 

 played out, and a wider and a deeper change than that effected three 

 centuries ago — a reformation, or rather a revolution of thought, the 

 extremes of which are represented by the intellectual heirs of John 

 of Leyden, and of Ignatius Loyola, rather than by those of Luther 

 and of Leo — is waiting to come on, nay, visible behind the scenes 

 to those who have good eyes. Men are beginning, once more, to 

 awake to the fact that matters of belief and of speculation are of 

 absolutely infinite practical importance, and are drawing off from 

 that sunny country "where it is always afternoon" — the sleepy hol- 

 low of broad indifferentism — to range themselves under their natural 

 banners. Change is in the air. It is whirling feather-heads into all 

 sorts of eccentric orbits, and filling the steadiest with a sense of inse- 

 curity. It insists on reopening all questions and asking all institu 

 tions, however venerable, by what right they exist, and whether they 

 are, or are not, in harmony with the real or supposed wants of man- 

 kind. And it is remarkable that these searching inquiries are not so 

 much forced on institutions from without, as developed from within. 

 Consummate scholars question the value of learning ; priests contemn 

 dogma ; and w^omen turn their back upon man's ideal of perfect won> 

 anhood, and seek satisfaction in apocalyptic visions of some, as yet 

 unrealized, epicene reality. 



If there be a type of stability in this world, one would be inclined 

 to look for it in the old universities of England. But it has been 

 my business, of late, to hear a good deal about what is going on in 

 these famous corporations ; and I have been filled with astonishment 



