508 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF THE LATE REV. DR CHALMERS. 
deserved, and fully deserved. There is great power of argument, felicitous illus- 
tration, and a glowing enthusiasm of admiration, for the theological literature, 
and the erudition, and the learning, and the eminent men produced by the eccle- 
siastical and academical endowments of England. In reference to the Church of 
England he writes :—‘“ There are many who look with an evil eye to the endow- 
ments of the English Church, and to the indolence of her dignitaries. But to 
that Church the theological literature of our nation stands indebted for her best 
acquisitions ; and we hold it a refreshing spectacle, at any time that meagre 
Socinianism pours forth a new supply of flippancies and errors, when we behold, 
as we have often done, an armed champion come forth in full equipment, from 
some high and lettered retreat of that noble hierarchy; nor can we grudge her 
the wealth of her endowments, when we think how well, under her venerable 
auspices, the battles of orthodoxy have been fought,—that in this holy warfare 
they are her sons and her scholars who are ever foremost in the field—ready at 
all times to face the threatening mischief, and by the weight of their erudition to 
overturn it.” 
In the same work, ‘‘On the Use and Abuse of Literary and Ecclesiastical 
Endowments,’’ he thus writes of Oxford and Cambridge: 
“We cannot conclude this passing notice of the Universities of England, with- 
out the mention of how much they are ennobled by those great master-spirits, 
those men of might and of high achievement,—the Newtons, and the Miltons, and 
the Drydens, and the Barrows, and the Addisons, and the Butlers, and the Clarkes, 
and the Stillingfleets, and the Ushers, and the Foxes, and the Pitts, and Johnsons, 
who, within their attic retreats, received that first awakening, which afterwards 
expanded into the aspirations and the triumphs of loftiest genius. This is the 
true heraldry of colleges. Their family honour is built on the prowess of sons, 
not on the greatness of ancestors; and we will venture to say, that there are no 
seminaries in Europe on which there sits a greater weight of accumulated glory, 
than that which has been reflected, both on Oxford and Cambridge, by that long 
and bright train of descendants who have sprung from them. It is impossible to 
make even the bare perusal of their names without the feeling, that there has 
been summoned before the eye of the mind the panorama of all that has upheld 
the lustre, whether of England’s philosophy, or of England’s patriotism, for cen- 
turies together. We have often thought what a meagre and stinted literature we 
should have had without them; and what, but for the two Universities, would 
have been the present state of science or theology in England! These rich semi- 
naries have been the direct and the powerful organs for the elaboration of both; 
and both would rapidly decline, as if languishing under the want of their needful 
aliment, were the endowments of colleges swept away. It were a truly Gothic 
spoliation ; and the rule of that political economy which could seize upon their 
revenues, would be, in effect, as hostile to the cause of sound and elevated learn- 
he 

