50 UNIVERSITIES: ACTUAL AND IDEAL. 



notions of Literary and Historical Criticism ; and, above 

 all, with visions of Art, of a kind which not only would 

 not fit into the scholastic scheme, but showed them a 

 pre-Christian, and indeed altogether tin-Christian world, 

 of such grandeur and beauty that they ceased to think 

 of any other. They were as men who had kissed the 

 Fairy Queen, and wandering with her in the dim love- 

 liness of the under-world, cared not to return to the 

 familiar ways of home and fatherland, though they lay, 

 at arm's length, overhead. Cardinals were more familiar 

 with Yirgil than with Isaiah ; and Popes laboured, with 

 great success, to re-paganise Rome. 



The second influence was the slow, but sure, growth 

 of the physical sciences. It was discovered that some 

 results of speculative thought, of immense practical and 

 theoretical importance, can be verified by observation ; 

 and are always true, however severely they may be 

 tested. Here, at any rate, was knowledge, to the cer- 

 tainty of which no authority could add, or take away, 

 one jot or tittle, and to which the tradition of a thousand 

 years was as insignificant as the hearsay of yesterday. 

 To the scholastic system, the study of classical litera- 

 ture might be inconvenient and distracting, but it was 

 possible to hope that it could be kept within bounds. 

 Physical science, on the other hand, was an irreconcilable 

 enemy, to be excluded at all hazards. The College of 

 Cardinals has not distinguished itself in Physics or Physi- 

 ology ; and no Pope has, as yet, set up public laboratories 

 in the Vatican. 



