34 UNIVERSITIES : ACTUAL AND IDEAL. [LECT. 



aviary of fowls took shelter. That element is the 

 element of Endowment. It differed from the preced- 

 ing, in its original design 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 penetrated 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 handi- 

 crafts 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 mankind ; and built 

 colleges and halls in which he might be not only 

 housed and fed, but taught. 



The Colleges were very generally placed in strict 

 subordination to the University by their founders; 

 but, in many cases, their endowment, consisting of 

 land, has undergone an " unearned increment," which 

 has given these societies a continually increasing 

 weight and importance as against the unendowed, or 

 fixedly endowed, University. In Pharaoh's dream, 

 the seven lean kine eat up the seven fat ones. In 

 the reality of historical fact, the fat Colleges have 

 eaten up the lean Universities. 



Even here in Aberdeen, though the causes at work 



