ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM. 323 



required scientific attainments. Of late years, under 

 the zealous and unremitting care of Mr. Duncan, 

 the Ashmolean Museum, as we understand, has 

 been re-arranged, and has received many valuable 

 additions. We have been likewise assured, that a 

 more general feeling in favour of the physical 

 sciences pervades at Oxford than heretofore, and 

 that there is a strong desire, among several in- 

 fluential members, to follow up the examples already 

 exhibited at Cambridge. It must not be concealed, 

 however, that this exclusion of zoology, as a " part 

 and parcel" of our academic studies, is a national 

 stigma : that it has repeatedly been adverted to, in 

 terms of regret and of censure, by our own writers ; 

 and that it calls forth the astonishment and reproach 

 of every enlightened foreigner. A stranger, ig- 

 norant of our national peculiarities, would almost 

 imagine, from the rigour with which their study is 

 enforced, that the writings of the heathen poets were 

 peculiarly adapted to purify the heart, and curb the 

 licentiousness of the youthful imagination ; or that 

 they formed, in some inexplicable way, a string of 

 commentaries upon our religious creed.* And he 

 might be further led to suppose that those wonders 

 of the visible creation, which, when considered, will 

 bring home conviction to the philosophic sceptic, 

 were unworthy of study or regard, as if they were 

 things of mere chance, — produced by a congregation 

 of fortuitous atoms, alike incapable of demonstrating 



* See the admirable remarks bearing on this subject in 

 Forster's Essays, Sth ed. p. 348—374. 

 Y 2 



