24 THE MODERN UNIVERSITY MOVEMENT 
winning form, pouring it forth with the zeal of enthusiasm, 
and lighting up his own love of it in the breasts of his hearers. 
It is the place where the catechist makes good his ground as 
he goes, treading in the truth day by day into the ready 
memory, and wedging and tightening it into the expanding 
reason. It is a place which wins the admiration of the young 
by its celebrity, kindles the affections of the middle-aged by 
its beauty, and rivets the fidelity of the old by its associations. 
It is a seat of wisdom, a light of the world, a minister of the 
faith, an Alma Mater of the rising generation. It is this and 
a great deal more, and demands a somewhat better head and 
hand than mine to deseribe it well.’ 
Such in the splendid prose, which mirrors the purity and 
nobility of his great soul, is Newman’s best attempt to say 
what a university should be. 
Can our new universities ever be such? I see them launched 
in a distracted world amid much that is good and much that 
is evil; I feel now the fair wind and now the foul; I have seen 
at one time men stint themselves of money, time, and health, 
to help us on our course, because they have thought we had 
a great destiny; I have seen at another time a man with 
money bags and transitory power asking an ardent professor 
of history what he was doing for the trade of the district. 
I have no claim to be a prophet, and I will only say that I for 
one am content to work in hope. Every thinking man must 
ask himself once at least if he is devoting his talent, however 
small it may be, to the worthiest task that he can reach, and 
he must decide as best he can. My only defensible claim for 
speaking to you to-day on the subject I have chosen, is that 
it is one to which from choice I devote the labour of my life, 
and one which engages the whole of my enthusiasm. 
