UNIVERSITIES: ACTUAL AND IDEAL. 37 



tion is better than knowledge ; but in order to do what 

 is right, we must know what is right." * An irre- 

 fragable truth, I fancy. Acting upon it, the king 

 took pretty full compulsory powers, and carried into 

 effect a really considerable and effectual scheme of ele- 

 mentary education through the length and breadth of 

 his dominions. 



No doubt the idolaters out by the Elbe, in what is 

 now part of Prussia, objected to the Prankish king's 

 measures; no doubt the priests, who had never hesi- 

 tated about sacrificing all unbelievers in their fantastic 

 deities and futile conjurations, were the loudest in chant- 

 ing the virtues of toleration ; no doubt they denounced 

 as a cruel persecutor the man who would not allow 

 them, however sincere they might be, to go on spread- 

 ing delusions which debased the intellect, as much as 

 they deadened the moral ^ sense, and undermined the 

 bonds of civil allegiance ; no doubt, if they had lived 

 in these times, they would have been able to show, 

 with ease, that the king's proceedings were totally con- 

 trary to the best liberal principles. But it may be said, 

 in justification of the Teutonic ruler, first, that he was 

 born before those principles, and did not suspect that 

 the best way of getting disorder into order was to let 

 it alone; and, secondly, that his rough and question- 

 able proceedings did, more or less, bring about the end 



* " Quamvia enira melius sit bene facere quam nosse, prius tamen 

 est nosse quam facere." "Karoli Magni Regis Constjtutio de Scholis 

 per singula Episcopia et Monasteria instituendis," addressed to the Abbot 

 of Fulda. Baluzius, " Capitularia Regura Francorum," T. i., p. 202. 



