UNIVERSITIES: ACTUAL AND IDEAL. 41 



Time, if I am what archaeologists call a " survival " 

 of the primitive head and ruler of the University, your 

 Chancellor stands in the same relation to the Papacy ; 

 and, with all respect for his Grace, I think I may say 

 that we both look terribly shrunken when compared 

 with our great originals. 



Not so is it with a second foreign element, which 

 silently dropped into the soil of Universities, like the 

 grain of mustard-seed in the parable; and, like that 

 grain, grew into a tree, in whose branches a whole aviary 

 of fowls took shelter. That element is the element of 

 Endowment. It differed from the preceding, 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 in- 

 tellectual ability is not so common or so unimportant a 

 gift that it should be allowed to run to waste upon mere 

 handicrafts and chares. The man who was a blessing to 

 his contemporaries, but who so often has been converted 

 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 



