IX ADDRESS ON UNIVERSITY EDUCATION 259 



have a certain influence in that most important 

 matter, the appointment of your professors ? I 

 throw out these suggestions, as I have said, in 

 ignorance of the practical difficulties that may lie 

 in the way of carrying them into effect, on the 

 general ground that personal and local influences 

 are very subtle, and often unconscious, while the 

 future greatness and efficiency of the noble institu- 

 tion which now commences its work must largely 

 depend upon its freedom from them. 



I constantly hear Americans speak of the charm 

 which our old mother country has for them, of the 

 delight with which they wander through the 

 streets of ancient towns, or climb the battlements 

 of mediaeval strongholds, the names of which are 

 indissolubly associated with the great epochs of 

 that noble literature which is our common inherit- 

 ance ; or with the blood-stained steps of that secular 

 progress, by which the descendants of the savage 

 Britons and of the wild pirates of the North Sea 

 have become converted into warriors of order and 

 champions of peaceful freedom, exhausting what 

 still remains of the old Berserk spirit in subduing 

 nature, and turning the wilderness into a garden. 

 But anticipation has no less charm than retrospect, 

 and to an Englishman landing upon your shores for 

 the first time, travelling for hundreds of miles 

 through strings of great and well-ordered cities, 

 seeing your enormous actual, and almost infinite 



