CORRESPONDENCE, 1867-70. 375 



of the Professors has ventured to deny to me the truth of what 1867. 



I told them. I did not publish my letter of resignation because 



I did not wish to hurt my old friends in the College. If they 



can get a mess of pottage for their birthright I should be very 



glad they had it. I resigned in November, but remained until 



the end of the session, of course. All that time not one of the 



old hands among my colleagues made the slightest allusion to 



the fact of my resignation, and I am sure they felt that they had 



better let the subject alone. Two of the younger ones, indeed, 



undertook to instruct me that I was wrong about the principle 



of the College, which I had studied before they were born. 



I believe, from observation, that both in colleges which pro- 

 fess exclusion, and in those which profess perfect neutrality, 

 there is a concealed under-current of, let us say, philosophy, 

 veiled under formalism in one case and toleration in another. 

 Get your smelling-salts ready, for I am going to tell you that 

 a certain section of your order are in earnest about nothing but 

 the endowments. These men see danger in all but formal 

 adherence to religion, and would rather have a world of con. 

 cealed philosophers than one of earnest believers in actual Pro- 

 vidence and guidance. This, I say, I glean from observation ; 

 there are easy means of verifying what I say. Of course, the 

 neutral places have their share of this. But a place like 

 University College and not alone has its share of the philo- 

 sophers who are really earnest about their system religious 

 atheists this phrase comes nearer than anything else ; men who 

 believe that the moral ends of the universe, so far as there are 

 any, are better answered by their concoction of reasoned right and 

 wrong than by any reliance on higher government. To one or 

 two perhaps of these men University College is indebted for its 

 rise or fall, whichever it shall turn out to be. I hope it will be a 

 rise, for they may as well have the profits of duplicity as others. 



Perhaps I shall never write as much about University Col- 

 lege in all my life to come. 



I am no way surprised at the money part of the business I 

 mean the fear of diminution of pupils from a distinguished 

 Unitarian. Twelve years ago or more a Mr. Peene left about 

 1,5007. to be a fund for buying books, and to be selected by 

 Professors of Latin and Mathematics, being members of the Estab- 

 lishment. To my surprise they caught at the money. But they 

 did not venture to acknowledge openly what they were doing . 

 They did not, as they ought to have done, write to me to know 



