Many long years had passed since I visited Oxford,--
some twenty-eight or more. I had friends among the
resident members of that venerable domicile of learning.
Pleasant had been the time that I had spent there, of
which intervening years had not diminished the remembrance
--perhaps heightened the tone of its colouring.
On many accounts I regarded that beautiful city with
affectionate veneration. There were more than local
attractions to render it interesting. There were the
recollections of those who ceased in the interval to be
denizens of this world. These could not but breathe
sadness over the noble edifices that recalled men,
conversations, and convivialities which, however long
departed, shadowed upon the mind its own inevitable
destiny. Again were those venerable buildings before
me in their architectural richness. There were tower,
and roof, and gateway, in all their variety of outline,
defined with the sharp light and shade peculiar to
ecclesiastical architecture. There were tufted groves
overshadowing the haunts of learning; and there, too,
was old Magdalen, which used to greet our sight so
pleasantly upon our approach to the city. I began
to fancy I had leaped no gulf of time since, for the
Cherwell ran on as of old. I felt that the happy allusion
of Quevedo to the Tiber was not out of place here,
"The fugitive is alone permanent." The same river ran
on as it had run on before, but the cheerful faces that
had been once reflected in its stream had passed away.
I saw things once familiar as I saw them before; but
"the fathers, where were they ?" I was in this respect
like one awaked from the slumber of an age, who found
himself a stranger in his own land.
I walked through High Street. I entered All Souls'
and came out quickly, for the quadrangle, or rather one
glance round it, was sufficient to put "the past to pain."
I went over the different sites, and even paced Christ
Church meadows. But I could not deceive myself for
a moment. There was an indescribable vacuum somewhere
that indicated there was no mode of making the
past the present. What had become of the pleasant
faces, the cheerful voices, the animal spirits, which
seemed in my eyes to give a soul to those splendid
donations of our forefathers to learning in years gone
by? That instinct--soul, spirit, whatever it be--which
animates and vivifies everything, and without which the
palace is not comparable to the hovel possessing it,--
that instinct or spirit was absent for me, at least. At
length I adjourned to the Star, somewhat moody, more
than half wishing I had not entered the city. I ordered
my solitary meal, and began ruminating, as we all do,
over the thousandth-time told tale of human destiny by
generation after generation. I am not sure I did not
greet with sullen pleasure a heavy, dark, dense mass of
cloud that at that moment canopied the city. The
mind finds all kinds of congenialities grateful at such
moments. Some drops of rain fell; then a shower,
tolerably heavy. I could not go out again as I intended
doing. I sat and sipped my wine, thinking of the fate
of cities,--of Nineveh the renowned, of the marbles
lately recovered from thence with the mysterious arrowheaded
characters. I thought that some future Layard
might exhume the cornices of the Oxford temples. The
deaths of cities were as inevitable as those of men. I
felt that my missing friends had only a priority in
mortality, and that the law of the Supreme existed to
be obeyed without man's questionings.
But a sun-burst took place, the shower ceased, all
became fresh and clear. I saw several gownsmen pass
down the street, and I sallied forth again. Several who
were in front of me, so full was I of old imaginings,
I thought might be old friends whom I should recognize.
How idle! I strolled to the Isis. It was all glitter and
gaiety. The sun shone out warmly and covered the
surface of the river with gold. Numerous skiffs of the
university-men were alive on the water, realizing the
lines,--
"Some lightly o'er the current swim,
Some show their gaily gilded trim
Quick glancing to the sun."
Here was the repetition of an old performance, but
the actors were new. I too had once floated over that
glittering water, or lain up by the bank in conversation,
or reciting verses, or, perhaps, in that silent, dreamy
vacancy, in which the mind ruminates or rests folded
up within itself in the consciousness of its own immortality.
Here I must place a word or two in regard to the
censures cast upon this magnificent foundation of learning
relative to the extravagances of young collegians.
Let it be granted, as it is asserted by some, that there
is too much exclusiveness, and that there are improvements
to be recommended in some of the details of an
organization so ancient. It may be true to a certain
extent, for what under heaven is perfect? But a vast
mass of good is to be brought to bear on the other
hand. I cannot, therefore, agree in those censures
which journalism has cast upon the officers of the
university, as if they encouraged, or, at all events, did not
control, the vicious extravagance of young men. I am
expressing only an individual opinion, it is true; and
this may be a reason why it may be undervalued, when
the justice of a question is not the criterion by which
it is judged. All that such a foundation can be expected
to do is to render the advantages of learning
as accessible as possible, upon reasonable terms, that
genius, not wealth alone, may be able to avail itself of
its advantages. If the present sum be too high, let its
reduction be considered with a view to any practicable
change. The pecuniary resources of the collegian it
becomes no part of the duty of the university to control,
beyond the demands necessary for the main object
of instruction. As the circumstances of parents vary,
so will the pecuniary allowance made to their offspring.
It would be a task neither practicable nor justifiable
for the university to regulate the outlay of the collegian,
or, in fact, become the paymaster of his menus plaisirs.
Only let such a task be imagined in its enormity of
control, from the son of the nobleman with an allowance
of a thousand a year to one of a hundred and
fifty pounds. It is not in the college, but prior to the
arrival there of the youth, that he should be instructed
in the views his relations have in sending him, and be
taught that he must not ape the outlay and show of
those who have larger means. If a youth orders a
dozen coats within a time for which one only would
be found adequate, I do not see what his college has
to do with it. Youths entering the navy and army
are left in a much more extended field of temptation.
No time-hallowed walls shelter them. No salutary
college rules remind them of their moral duties, daily
and almost hourly. They go up and down the world
under their own guardianship, exposed to every sinister
influence, and with inclinations only restrained by their
own monitorship. The college discipline, even if it
extend not beyond college duties, is a perpetual
remembrancer of the high moral end for which the student is
placed within its precincts. His only allurement to
extravagance is the desire of vying with those who make
a greater display than himself, or else it arises from,
if possible, a less defensible motive, namely, that of
becoming himself an object of emulation to others. It
is not the duty of the college authorities to compensate
by their watchfulness the effects of a weak understanding,
or that lax principle, or the want of self-command,
of which the neglect of the parent or guardian has
been the cause. If the freshman is destitute of
self-dependence and self-restraint he must suffer from
the consequences. Not only in the navy and army is youth
exposed to temptations very far beyond the collegian,
but in the inns of court young men are left to take care
of themselves, in the midst of a great capital, without
any surveillance whatever. From these youths arise
excellent men of business. Most assuredly under the
surveillance of a college in smaller cities, and where
many heads of expense are from the nature of their
position wholly out of the question, it does seem singular
that such complaints should arise. It is true,
display is the vice of modern society among the old as
well as the young, and in both cases most dishonest
means are had recourse to sustain those appearances,
which are all the world looks to. It is possible, therefore,
that little efforts have been made to initiate youth,
prior to entering the universities, in that path of
self-denial and high-mindedness which are the safeguard
from vicious prodigality. They bring with them the
vices of their caste, whatever that caste may be. Youth
is imitative, and seldom a clumsy copyist, of the faults
of its elders, provided those faults are fashionable faults,
however unprincipled. However this may be, I must
protest against the universities being made answerable
for these doings. Attempts have been made, and failed,
in respect to manners and to credit; and have failed
clearly because they were impracticable, and, more than
that, better left alone. The university ought not to be
answerable in such cases, any more than the benchers
for the Temple students. It cannot be expected that
the noble quadrangles of our colleges are to become
something like poor-law prisons, and the regulations of
the night be extended over the day. The very existence
of the collegian, as such, implies something like
freedom, both mental and bodily. Learning that is
converted into a tyranny will never bring forth good
fruit. It is the duty of parents and schoolmasters to
impress upon the mind of youth that a seat of learning
is the home of an easy frugality rather than of prodigal
rivalry; that the university will only give degrees and
honours where there is industry and good moral conduct.
It is to be feared that youth, quitting the discipline
of the school, looks upon the university as the
place where he may indulge in his own wayward will,
and be as idle and indolent as he please. If this be
the case the university is not to blame for such lapses,
but a bad prior apprehension of duty, and a defective,
ill-directed education.
It is impossible to read the biographies of some of
our most celebrated men, and not to see that with
means scanty enough they were enabled to keep their
terms with honour, and in the end confer additional
celebrity upon the noble foundations where they had
studied. If such be the case, we have only the result
of personal good or ill conduct to explain the whole of
the affair. But enough on this subject.
But it is not the venerable appearance of University
College, hallowed by the associations of so many
centuries in age, nor Queen's opposite, nor All Souls',
nor any other of the colleges as mere buildings, that so
connect them with our feelings. We must turn the
mind from stone and wood to the humanity in connection
with them. It is that which casts over them
the "religious light," speaking so sadly and sweetly to
the heart. In University College we see the glorious
name of Alfred, and nearly a thousand years, with their
perished annals, point to it as the witness of their
departed successions. Who on seeing New College
does not recall William of Wykeham? and then, what
a roll of proud names own this renowned university
for their Alma Mater. The very stones "prate of the
whereabout" of things connected with the development
of great minds, and while we look without fatigue at
the gorgeous mass of buildings in this university, we
feel we are contemplating what carries an intimate
connexion, in object at least, with that all of man which
marches in the track of eternity. It is not mere antiquity,
therefore, on which our reverence for a great
seminary of learning is founded. Priority of existence
has no solid claims to our regard, except for that verde
antique which covers it, as it covers all things past.
good or indifferent; it is the connexion of the foundation
with the history of man--with the names that, like
the flowers called "immortals," bloom amid the wrecks
and desolateness with which the flood of ages strew the
rearway of humankind.
Of late there has been small response to feelings
such as these in the great world, for we have not been
looking much toward what is above us, nor discriminating
from meaner things those which approach to
heroic natures. We must abandon Mammon, politics,
and polemics, when we would approach the threshold
of elevated meditation--when we dwell on the illustrious
names of the past, and tread over the stones which they
trod. I never wandered along the banks of the sedgy
Cam, at that lone, twilight hour, when the dimness of
external objects tends most to concentrate the faculties
upon the immediate object of contemplation, but I
have fancied the shades of Bacon, Milton, or Locke,
to be near me, as the Indian fancies the shades of his
fathers haunt the old hunting-grounds of his race. I
know that these are heterodox feelings in the present
day. I know that he who speaks of Homer or Milton,
for example, is continually answered by the question,
"Who reads them now?" The truth being, perhaps,
that we are getting too far below them to relish their
superior standard in sterling merit. But there are still
in our universities, if not elsewhere, some who are
content to be the last of the Goths in the estimation
of the multitude, who cannot see the Isis, or Cherwell,
or the reedy Cam, without feelings of which the crowd
knows nothing; who can dream away an hour in the
avenue of Christ Church, and almost conjure spirits
from the depths of the grave to realize the pictures of
imagination, which are there always invested with purity
and holiness, so much do external things impress their
character on our imaginings. This is the true poetry
of life, neither found in the haunts of fashion, nor
among the denizens of Cornhill or St. Giles'. The good
and deep things of the mind, the search into the secrets
of nature, the sublimest truth, the purest philosophy of
which man has to boast, has proceeded from those who
were inhabitants of such seats of learning. It is
impossible to state the precise amount of assistance which
genius and learning may derive from the ease and peace
enjoyed in such a university. They are inestimable to
the student from association, tranquillity, and convenience.
The very "dim religious light" of college rooms
are solicitations to reflection. Then there are the
conveniences of first-rate professors, and access to the
writings of the learned in all ages. Thus some who
professed a distaste for a university life, have returned
to it again, and made it the arena where they have conquered
a lasting reputation--such, for example, was the
case with Gray the poet.
The increase of knowledge, and consequently of
morality, is the great aim of such a noble establishment
as this; and the rewards and honours dispensed there
are bestowed in proportion to the industry and good
conduct of those who receive them. If the offences of
freshmen outside the walls be unvisited by the university
from wariness in the offenders, or the impossibility of
controlling them, they are certain to meet with a just
estimation of their demerit here; and, as before noticed,
this is perhaps the best mode of repressing them. The
assistance derived by the industrious student from the
university itself is invaluable. The very locality is an
aid to progress. Where can there be places more
favourable for thought than those noble buildings,
ancient halls, and delightful walks? Everything invites
to contemplation. Magdalen always seemed to me as
if soliciting the student's presence in a peculiar manner.
A favourite resort of mine, at certain times, was the road
passing the Observatory, leading to Woodstock. But
of all the college walks, those of Magdalen were the
more impressive and attractive. It appeared to embody
the whole of the noble city in its own personification,
as a single word will sometimes express the pith of an
entire sentence. The "Mighty Tom" in the olden
time, even of Walter de Mapes, if its metal was then
out of the ore, never sounded (then perhaps not nine)
but the midnight hour, to that worthy archdeacon, with
more of the character of its locality, than the visual
aspect of Magdalen represents the beautiful city to one
in its entirety. It seems a sort of metonymy; Maudlin
put for Oxford. The walk is, after all, but a sober path,
worthy by association with one of the walks of Eden.
Yet it shows no gay foliage, nor "shade above shade
a woody theatre," such as is seen on a mountain
declivity. It is a simple shadowy walk--shadowy to
richness, cool, tranquil, redolent of freshness. There
the soul feels "private, inactive, calm, contemplative,"
linked to things that were and are not. The mellow
hue of time, not yet stricken by decay, clothes the
buildings of this college, which, compared with other
edifices more steeped in maturity of years, occupies,
as it were, a middle term in existence.
The variety of building in this city is amazing, and
would occupy a very considerable time to study even
imperfectly. At a little distance no place impresses the
mind more justly with its own lofty pretensions. The
towers, steeples, and domes, rising over the masses of
foliage beneath, which conceal the bodies of the edifices,
seen at the break of morning or at sunset, appear
in great beauty. Bathed in light, although not the
"alabaster tipped with golden spires" of the poet, for
even the climate of Oxford is no exception to the
defacement of nature's colouring, everywhere that coal
smoke ascends; but the tout ensemble is truly poetical
and magnificent.
Oriel still, they say, maintains its precedency of
teaching its students how to conduct themselves with a
view to university honours, and to the world's respect.
The preliminary examinations there have proved a
touchstone of merit, and elevated Oriel College into
something near the envy of every other in this country.
Worthy Oriel, the star of Oxford. "I don't know how
it is," said the Rev. C. C., walking down High Street one
day, "but Oriel College is all I envy Oxford. It is the
richest gem in the ephod of the high-priest (vice-chancellor)
of this university. I should like to steal
and transplant it to my Alma Mater among the fens."
There was formerly a Welsh harper in Oxford, whom
the collegians sometimes denominated King David.
He was the first of the Cymri brotherhood I ever heard
perform. Since that distant day I have often heard
those minstrels in their native land, particularly in
North Wales, at Bedd Gelert, Caernarvon, and other
places, but I confess I never was so much struck as by
this Oxford harper. He often played at the Angel,
where the university men used to group round him, for
he excited general admiration. His music was not of so
plaintive a character as that in his own land, or else the
scenery of the latter had some effect in saddening the
music there through association--perhaps this difference
was, after all, only in fancy.
Christchurch, the noblest of the churches! How
have I heard with delight its merry peal of bells, and the
deep resonance of the "Mighty Tom," that sounds with
no "friendly voice" the call home of the students still,
I presume, as it did so many years ago! There is a
long list of names, of no mean reputation, educated
here, since the rapacious Henry VIII. seized the
foundations, which had belonged to Cardinal Wolsey. The
gratitude of posterity, never very strong, has in the
present case preserved the remembrance of Wolsey,
if I recollect aright, by a statue of the proud man in
his cardinal's robes. The grove of trees belonging to
Christchurch, and the scenery accompanying the entire
buildings, are eminently impressive. Here, when divine
service is celebrating, there is a peculiar propriety, or
rather adaptation of the architecture to the feeling; the
trees, and every accompaniment, are suitable to the end.
There is religion or its sentiment addressing the mind
here through every sense. All that can raise devotion
in external appliances, combines in a wonderful manner;
and when the sound of the organ is reverberated deeply
along the vaulted roofs and walls, the effect was
indescribably fine. Christchurch walk or meadow is an
adjunct to this college, such as few places possess. I
have trod it with those who will never tread it again. I
have skimmed over its smooth shaven surface when life
seemed a vista of unmeasured years. Its very beauty
touches upon a melancholy chord, since it vibrates the
sound of time passed away with those who lie in dust in
distant climates, of whom memory alone is now the only
record that they were and are not.
I remember being told by an eminent, but aged
doctor in divinity, who had been the better part of his
life employed in the education of youth, that he had
kept an account of the history of all his pupils as far as
he could obtain it, and they were very numerous. From
his own tuition--and there were some celebrated names
amongst them--he traced them to the university, or to
professions of a more active nature than a sojourn
at the university would allow. To Oxford he had
sent the larger number of his pupils. "And afterwards,
doctor?" "Some came off nobly there: others
I heard of in distant parts of the globe in their country's
service: but it is the common tale with nearly all of
them--they are dead." What hosts, I often thought,
who had moved among, the deep shades of this university
until it became entwined with their earliest affections
--who had studied within those embattled walls until
the sight of them became almost a part of his existence
--what hosts of such have but served to swell the
waters of oblivion, and press the associations of a
common mortality upon the mind in the reflection on
this very truism! The late Sir Egerton Brydges--a
writer whose talents, though admitted, were never
received as they merited to have been by the world,
owing, perhaps, to an untoward disposition in other
respects--was of opinion that the calmness and
seclusion of a university were not best adapted for calling
forth the efforts of genius; but that adversity and some
struggling were necessary to bring out greatness of
character. He thought that praise enervated the mind,
and that to bear it required a much greater degree of
fortitude than to withstand censure. The consequence
of this would be, that the honours decreed in a
university must be pernicious to youth. This cannot be
conceded. Sir Egerton's notion may be just in relation to
himself, or to one or two temperaments irregularly constituted;
but a university exists not for the exceptions, but for the
many. How numerous is the list of those who, but for the
fostering care of Oxford or Cambridge, would have never been
known as the ornament and delight of their fellow-men!
How much more numerous is the list of those, whose abilities
not rising beyond the circle of social usefulness have lived
"obscure to fame," yet owe the pleasure they imparted
to their friends, and the beguilement of many troubles
inseparable from mortality, to the fruits of their university
studies, and to a partial unrolling before them of that
map of knowledge, which before those of loftier claims
and some hold upon fame had been more amply displayed!
In this view of the matter, the justness of
which cannot be contested, the utility of such foundations
is boundless. The effect upon the social body.--
I do not speak of polemics, but of the sound instruction
thus made available--cannot be estimated. In the midst
of fluctuating systems of instruction, it is something to
have a standard by which to test the measure of
knowledge imparted to youth. If accused of being
restricted in variety of knowledge, the perfection and
mastery in what is taught must be conceded to Oxford
and Cambridge. Perhaps there is too much reason to
fear, that without these foundations we should speedily
fall into a very superficial knowledge, indeed, of the
classical languages of antiquity. This would be to
exclude ourselves from an acquaintance with all past time,
except in monkish fiction and the feudal barbarism of
the Goths of the north.
There are, I verily believe, or I should rather say
there were, imbibed at the university so many attachments
at one time to words in place of things, that the
collegian in after life became liable to reproach upon
this head. Pedants are bred everywhere out of literature,
and the variety in verbiage once exhibited by some
university men has been justly condemned. But while
such word-worms were crawling here and there out of
the porches of our colleges, giants in acquirement were
striding over them in their petty convolutions. Their
intertwinings attracted the attention of the mere gazer,
who is always more stricken with any microcosmic
object that comes casually in the way and is embraced
at a glance, than with objects the magnitude of which
demand repeated examinations. But all this while the
great and glorious spring of knowledge was unpolluted.
The reign of mere verbiage passed away; the benefits
of the universities had never ceased to be imparted
the whole time. The key to the better stores of
knowledge was placed in the hands of every one who chose
to avail himself of its advantages. The minds of the
collegians were filled with an affection for the works of
the writers of antiquity, which have been the guide,
solace, and pleasure of the greatest and most accomplished
men since the Christian era commenced. Studies
will teach their own use in after life "by the wisdom
that is about them and above them, won by observation,"
as a great writer observes; but then there must be the
studies.
There seems of late years much less of that feeling
for poetry than once existed; the same may be observed
in respect to classical learning. Few now regard how
perished nations lived and passed away,--how men
thought, acted, and were moved, for example, in the
time of Pericles or the Roman Augustus. What are
they to us? What is blind Meonides to us, or that
Roman who wrote odes so beautifully--who understood
so well the philosophy of life and the poetry of life
at the spring of Bardusia? In the past generation, a
part of the adolescent being and of manhood extended
a kindly feeling towards them. We hear no admiration
of those immortal strains now. We must turn for
them to our universities. People are getting shy of them,
as rich men shirk poor friends. Are we in the declining
state, that of "mechanical arts and merchandize,"
to use Lord Bacon's phrase, and is our middle age of
learning past? Even then, thank Heaven, we have our
universities still, where we may, for a time at least,
enter and converse with the spirits of the good, that
"sit in the clouds and mock" the rest of the greedy
world. They will last our time--glorious mementos of
the anxiety of our forefathers for the preservation of
learning; hallowed by grateful recollections, by time,
renown, virtue, conquests over ignorance, imperishable
gratitude, a proud roll of mighty names in their sons,
and the prospect of continuing to be monuments of
glory to unborn generations. Long may Oxford and
Cambridge stand and brighten with years, though to
some they may not, as they do to me, exhibit a title to
the gratitude and admiration of Old England, to which
it would be difficult to point out worthy rivals.
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