If we would know what a University is, considered in its elementary
idea, we must betake ourselves to the first and most celebrated home of
European literature and source of European civilization, to the bright
and beautiful Athens,--Athens, whose schools drew to her bosom, and
then sent back again to the business of life, the youth of the Western
World for a long thousand years. Seated on the verge of the continent,
the city seemed hardly suited for the duties of a central metropolis of
knowledge; yet, what it lost in convenience of approach, it gained in
its neighbourhood to the traditions of the mysterious East, and in the
loveliness of the region in which it lay. Hither, then, as to a sort
of ideal land, where all archetypes of the great and the fair were
found in substantial being, and all departments of truth explored, and
all diversities of intellectual power exhibited, where taste and
philosophy were majestically enthroned as in a royal court, where there
was no sovereignty but that of mind, and no nobility but that of
genius, where professors were rulers, and princes did homage, hither
flocked continually from the very corners of the _orbis terrarum_, the
many-tongued generation, just rising, or just risen into manhood, in
order to gain wisdom.
Pisistratus had in an early age discovered and nursed the infant genius
of his people, and Cimon, after the Persian war, had given it a home.
That war had established the naval supremacy of Athens; she had become
an imperial state; and the Ionians, bound to her by the double chain of
kindred and of subjection, were importing into her both their
merchandize and their civilization. The arts and philosophy of the
Asiatic coast were easily carried across the sea, and there was Cimon,
as I have said, with his ample fortune, ready to receive them with due
honours. Not content with patronizing their professors, he built the
first of those noble porticos, of which we hear so much in Athens, and
he formed the groves, which in process of time became the celebrated
Academy. Planting is one of the most graceful, as in Athens it was one
of the most beneficent, of employments. Cimon took in hand the wild
wood, pruned and dressed it, and laid it out with handsome walks and
welcome fountains. Nor, while hospitable to the authors of the city's
civilization, was he ungrateful to the instruments of her prosperity.
His trees extended their cool, umbrageous branches over the merchants,
who assembled in the Agora, for many generations.
Those merchants certainly had deserved that act of bounty; for all the
while their ships had been carrying forth the intellectual fame of
Athens to the western world. Then commenced what may be called her
University existence. Pericles, who succeeded Cimon both in the
government and in the patronage of art, is said by Plutarch to have
entertained the idea of making Athens the capital of federated Greece:
in this he failed, but his encouragement of such men as Phidias and
Anaxagoras led the way to her acquiring a far more lasting sovereignty
over a far wider empire. Little understanding the sources of her own
greatness, Athens would go to war: peace is the interest of a seat of
commerce and the arts; but to war she went; yet to her, whether peace
or war, it mattered not. The political power of Athens waned and
disappeared; kingdoms rose and fell; centuries rolled away,--they did
but bring fresh triumphs to the city of the poet and the sage. There
at length the swarthy Moor and Spaniard were seen to meet the blue-eyed
Gaul; and the Cappadocian, late subject of Mithridates, gazed without
alarm at the haughty conquering Roman. Revolution after revolution
passed over the face of Europe, as well as of Greece, but still she was
there,--Athens, the city of mind,--as radiant, as splendid, as
delicate, as young, as ever she had been.
Many a more fruitful coast or isle is washed by the blue Aegean, many a
spot is there more beautiful or sublime to see, many a territory more
ample; but there was one charm in Attica, which in the same perfection
was nowhere else. The deep pastures of Arcadia, the plain of Argos,
the Thessalian vale, these had not the gift; Boeotia, which lay to its
immediate north, was notorious for its very want of it. The heavy
atmosphere of that Boeotia might be good for vegetation, but it was
associated in popular belief with the dulness of the Boeotian
intellect: on the contrary, the special purity, elasticity, clearness,
and salubrity of the air of Attica, fit concomitant and emblem of its
genius, did that for it which earth did not;---it brought out every
bright hue and tender shade of the landscape over which it was spread,
and would have illuminated the face even of a more bare and rugged
country.
A confined triangle, perhaps fifty miles its greatest length, and
thirty its greatest breadth; two elevated rocky barriers, meeting at an
angle; three prominent mountains, commanding the plain,--Parnes,
Pentelicus, and Hymettus; an unsatisfactory soil; some streams, not
always full;--such is about the report which the agent of a London
company would have made of Attica. He would report that the climate
was mild; the hills were limestone; there was plenty of good marble;
more pasture land than at first survey might have been expected,
sufficient certainly for sheep and goats; fisheries productive; silver
mines once, but long since worked out; figs fair; oil first-rate;
olives in profusion. But what he would not think of noting down, was,
that that olive tree was so choice in nature and so noble in shape,
that it excited a religious veneration; and that it took so kindly to
the light soil, as to expand into woods upon the open plain, and to
climb up and fringe the hills. He would not think of writing word to
his employers, how that clear air, of which I have spoken, brought out,
yet blended and subdued the colours on the marble, till they had a
softness and harmony, for all their richness, which in a picture looks
exaggerated, yet is after all within the truth. He would not tell, how
that same delicate and brilliant atmosphere freshened up the pale
olive, till the olive forgot its monotony, and its cheek glowed like
the arbutus or beech of the Umbrian hills. He would say nothing of the
thyme and thousand fragrant herbs which carpeted Hymettus; he would
hear nothing of the hum of its bees; nor take much account of the rare
flavour of its honey, since Gozo and Minorca were sufficient for the
English demand. He would look over the Aegean from the height he had
ascended; he would follow with his eye the chain of islands, which,
starting from the Simian headland, seemed to offer the fabled
divinities of Attica, when they would visit their Ionian cousins, a
sort of viaduct thereto across the sea; but that fancy would not occur
to him, nor any admiration of the dark violet billows with their white
edges down below; nor of those graceful, fan-like jets of silver upon
the rocks, which slowly rise aloft like water spirits from the deep,
then shiver, and break, and spread, and shroud themselves, and
disappear, in a soft mist of foam; nor of the gentle, incessant heaving
and panting of the whole liquid plain; nor of the long waves, keeping
steady time, like a line of soldiery, as they resound upon the hollow
shore,--he would not deign to notice that restless living element at
all, except to bless his stars that he was not upon it. Nor the
distinct detail, nor the refined colouring, nor the graceful outline
and roseate golden hue of the jutting crags, nor the bold shadows cast
from Otus or Laurium by the declining sun;--our agent of a mercantile
firm would not value these matters even at a low figure. Rather we
must turn for the sympathy we seek to yon pilgrim student come from a
semi-barbarous land to that small corner of the earth, as to a shrine,
where he might take his fill of gazing on those emblems and
coruscations of invisible unoriginate perfection. It was the stranger
from a remote province, from Britain or from Mauritania, who in a scene
so different from that of his chilly, woody swamps, or of his fiery
choking sands, learned at once what a real University must be, by
coming to understand the sort of country, which was its suitable home.
Nor was this all that a University required, and found in Athens. No
one, even there, could live on poetry. If the students at that famous
place had nothing better than bright hues and soothing sounds, they
would not have been able or disposed to turn their residence there to
much account. Of course they must have the means of living, nay, in a
certain sense, of enjoyment; if Athens was to be an Alma Mater at the
time, or to remain afterwards a pleasant thought in their memory. And
so they had: be it recollected Athens was a port, and a mart of trade,
perhaps the first in Greece; and this was very much to the point, when
a number of strangers were ever flocking to it, whose combat was to be
with intellectual, not physical difficulties, and who claimed to have
their bodily wants supplied, that they might be at leisure to set about
furnishing their minds. Now, barren as was the soil of Attica, and
bare the face of the country, yet it had only too many resources for an
elegant, nay luxurious abode there. So abundant were the imports of
the place, that it was a common saying, that the productions, which
were found singly elsewhere, were brought all together in Athens. Corn
and wine, the staple of subsistence in such a climate, came from the
isles of the Aegean; fine wool and carpeting from Asia Minor; slaves,
as, now, from the Euxine, and timber too; and iron and brass from the
coasts of the Mediterranean. The Athenian did not condescend to
manufactures himself, but encouraged them in others; and a population
of foreigners caught at the lucrative occupation both for home
consumption and for exportation. Their cloth, and other textures for
dress and furniture, and their hardware--for instance, armour--were in
great request. Labour was cheap; stone and marble in plenty; and the
taste and skill, which at first were devoted to public buildings, as
temples and porticos, were in course of time applied to the mansions of
public men. If nature did much for Athens, it is undeniable that art
did much more.
Here some one will interrupt me with the remark: "By the bye, where are
we, and whither are we going?--what has all this to do with a
University? at least what has it to do with education? It is
instructive doubtless; but still how much has it to do with your
subject?" Now I beg to assure the reader that I am most
conscientiously employed upon my subject; and I should have thought
every one would have seen this: however, since the objection is made, I
may be allowed to pause awhile, and show distinctly the drift of what I
have been saying, before I go farther. What has this to do with my
subject! why, the question of the site is the very first that comes
into consideration, when a _Stadium Generale_ is contemplated; for that
site should be a liberal and noble one; who will deny it? All
authorities agree in this, and very little reflection will be
sufficient to make it clear. I recollect a conversation I once had on
this very subject with a very eminent man. I was a youth of eighteen,
and was leaving my University for the Long Vacation, when I found
myself in company in a public conveyance with a middle-aged person,
whose face was strange to me. However, it was the great academical
luminary of the day, whom afterwards I knew very well. Luckily for me,
I did not suspect it; and luckily too, it was a fancy of his, as his
friends knew, to make himself on easy terms especially with stage-coach
companions. So, what with my flippancy and his condescension, I
managed to hear many things which were novel to me at the time; and one
point which he was strong upon, and was evidently fond of urging, was
the material pomp and circumstance which should environ a great seat of
learning. He considered it was worth the consideration of the
government, whether Oxford should not stand in a domain of its own. An
ample range, say four miles in diameter, should be turned into wood and
meadow, and the University should be approached on all sides by a
magnificent park, with fine trees in groups and groves and avenues, and
with glimpses and views of the fair city, as the traveller drew near
it. There is nothing surely absurd in the idea, though it would cost a
round sum to realise it. What has a better claim to the purest and
fairest possessions of nature, than the seat of wisdom? So thought my
coach companion; and he did but express the tradition of ages and the
instinct of mankind.
For instance, take the great University of Paris. That famous school
engrossed as its territory the whole south bank of the Seine, and
occupied one half, and that the pleasanter half, of the city. King
Louis had the island pretty well as his own,--it was scarcely more than
a fortification; and the north of the river was given over to the
nobles and citizens to do what they could with its marshes; but the
eligible south, rising from the stream, which swept around its base, to
the fair summit of St. Genevieve, with its broad meadows, its vineyards
and its gardens, and with the sacred elevation of Montmartre
confronting it, all this was the inheritance of the University. There
was that pleasant Pratum, stretching along the river's bank, in which
the students for centuries took their recreation, which Alcuin seems to
mention in his farewell verses to Paris, and which has given a name to
the great Abbey of St. Germain-des-Prés. For long years it was devoted
to the purposes of innocent and healthy enjoyment; but evil times came
on the University; disorder arose within its precincts, and the fair
meadow became the scene of party brawls; heresy stalked through Europe,
and Germany and England no longer sending their contingent of students,
a heavy debt was the consequence to the academical body. To let their
land was the only resource left to them: buildings rose upon it, and
spread along the green sod, and the country at length became town.
Great was the grief and indignation of the doctors and masters, when
this catastrophe occurred. "A wretched sight," said the Proctor of the
German nation, "a wretched sight, to witness the sale of that ancient
manor, whither the Muses were wont to wander for retirement and
pleasure. Whither shall the youthful student now betake himself, what
relief will he find for his eyes, wearied with intense reading, now
that the pleasant stream is taken from him?" Two centuries and more
have passed since this complaint was uttered; and time has shown that
the outward calamity, which it recorded, was but the emblem of the
great moral revolution, which was to follow; till the institution
itself has followed its green meadows, into the region of things which
once were and now are not.
And in like manner, when they were first contemplating a University in
Belgium, some centuries ago, "Many," says Lipsius, "suggested Mechlin,
as an abode salubrious and clean, but Louvain was preferred, as for
other reasons, so because no city seemed from the disposition of place
and people, more suitable for learned leisure. Who will not approve
the decision? Can a site be healthier or more pleasant? The
atmosphere pure and cheerful; the spaces open and delightful; meadows,
fields, vines, groves, nay, I may say, a _rus in urbe_. Ascend and
walk round the walls; what do you look down upon? Does not the
wonderful and delightful variety smooth the brow and soothe the mind?
You have corn, and apples, and grapes; sheep and oxen; and birds
chirping or singing. Now carry your feet or your eyes beyond the
walls; there are streamlets, the river meandering along;
country-houses, convents, the superb fortress; copses or woods fill up
the scene, and spots for simple enjoyment." And then he breaks out
into poetry:
Salvete Athenae nostrae, Athens Belgicae,
Te Gallus, te Germanus, et te Sarmata
Invisit, et Britannus, et te duplicis
Hispaniae alumnus, etc.
Extravagant, then, and wayward as might be the thought of my learned
coach companion, when, in the nineteenth century, he imagined,
Norman-wise, to turn a score of villages into a park or pleasaunce,
still, the waywardness of his fancy is excused by the justness of his
principle; for certainly, such as he would have made it, a University
ought to be. Old Antony-a-Wood, discoursing on the demands of a
University, had expressed the same sentiment long before him; as Horace
in ancient times, with reference to Athens itself, when he spoke of
seeking truth "in the _groves_ of Academe." And to Athens, as will be
seen, Wood himself appeals, when he would discourse of Oxford. Among
"those things which are required to make a University," he puts down,--
"First, a good and pleasant site, where there is a wholesome and
temperate constitution of the air; composed with waters, springs or
wells, woods and pleasant fields; which being obtained, those
commodities are enough to invite students to stay and abide there. As
the Athenians in ancient times were happy for their conveniences, so
also were the Britons, when by a remnant of the Grecians that came
amongst them, they or their successors selected such a place in Britain
to plant a school or schools therein, which for its pleasant situation
was afterwards called Bellositum or Bellosite, now Oxford, privileged
with all those conveniences before mentioned."
By others the local advantages of that University have been more
philosophically analyzed;--for instance, with a reference to its
position in the middle of southern England; its situation on several
islands in a broad plain, through which many streams flowed; the
surrounding marshes, which, in times when it was needed, protected the
city from invaders; its own strength as a military position; its easy
communication with London, nay with the sea, by means of the Thames;
while the London fortifications hindered pirates from ascending the
stream, which all the time was so ready and convenient for a descent.
Alas! for centuries past that city has lost its prime honour and boast,
as a servant and soldier of the Truth. Once named the second school of
the Church, second only to Paris, the foster-mother of St. Edmund, St.
Richard, St. Thomas Cantilupe, the theatre of great intellects, of
Scotus the subtle Doctor, of Hales the irrefragable, of Occam the
special, of Bacon the admirable, of Middleton the solid, and of
Bradwardine the profound, Oxford has now lapsed to that level of mere
human loveliness, which in its highest perfection we admire in Athens.
Nor would it have a place, now or hereafter, in these pages, nor would
it occur to me to speak its name, except that, even in its sorrowful
deprivation, it still retains so much of that outward lustre, which,
like the brightness on the prophet's face, ought to be a ray from an
illumination within, as to afford me an illustration of the point on
which I am engaged, viz., what should be the material dwelling-place
and appearance, the local circumstances, and the secular concomitants
of a great University. Pictures are drawn in tales of romance, of
spirits seemingly too beautiful in their fall to be really fallen, and
the holy Pope at Rome, Gregory, in fact, and not in fiction, looked
upon the blue eyes and golden hair of the fierce Saxon youth in the
slave market, and pronounced them Angels, not Angles; and the spell
which this once loyal daughter of the Church still exercises upon the
foreign visitor, even now when her true glory is departed, suggests to
us how far more majestic and more touching, how brimful of
indescribable influence would be the presence of a University, which
was planted within, not without Jerusalem,--an influence, potent as her
truth is strong, wide as her sway is world-wide, and growing, not
lessening, by the extent of space over which its attraction would be
exerted.
Let the reader then listen to the words of the last learned German, who
has treated of Oxford, and judge for himself if they do not bear me
out, in what I have said of the fascination which the very face and
smile of a University possess over those who come within its range.
"There is scarce a spot in the world," says Huber, "that bears an
historical stamp so deep and varied as Oxford; where so many noble
memorials of moral and material power coöperating to an honourable end,
meet the eye all at once. He who can be proof against the strong
emotions which the whole aspect and genius of the place tend to
inspire, must be dull, thoughtless, uneducated, or of very perverted
views. Others will bear us witness, that, even side by side with the
Eternal Rome, the Alma Mater of Oxford may be fitly named, as producing
a deep, a lasting, and peculiar impression.
"In one of the most fertile districts of the Queen of the Seas, whom
nature has so richly blessed, whom for centuries past no footstep of
foreign armies has desecrated, lies a broad green vale, where the
Cherwell and the Isis mingle their full, clear waters. Here and there
primeval elms and oaks overshadow them; while in their various windings
they encircle gardens, meadows, and fields, villages, cottages,
farm-houses, and country-seats, in motley mixture. In the midst rises
a mass of mighty buildings, the general character of which varies
between convent, palace, and castle. Some few Gothic church-towers and
Romaic domes, it is true, break through the horizontal lines; yet the
general impression at a distance and at first sight, is essentially
different from that of any of the towns of the middle ages. The
outlines are far from being so sharp, so angular, so irregular, so
fantastical; a certain softness, a peculiar repose, reigns in those
broader, terrace-like rising masses. Only in the creations of Claude
Lorraine or Poussin could we expect to find a spot to compare with the
prevailing character of this picture, especially when lit up by a
favourable light. The principal masses consist of Colleges, the
University buildings, and the city churches; and by the side of these
the city itself is lost on distant view. But on entering the streets,
we find around us all the signs of an active and prosperous trade.
Rich and elegant shops in profusion afford a sight to be found nowhere
but in England; but with all this glitter and show, they sink into a
modest, and, as it were, a menial attitude, by the side of the grandly
severe memorials of the higher intellectual life, memorials which have
been growing out of that life from almost the beginning of Christianity
itself. Those rich and elegant shops are, as it were, the domestic
offices of these palaces of learning, which ever rivet the eye of the
observer, while all besides seems perforce to be subservient to them.
Each of the larger and more ancient Colleges looks like a separate
whole--an entire town, whose walls and monuments proclaim the vigorous
growth of many centuries; and the town itself has happily escaped the
lot of modern beautifying, and in this respect harmonizes with the
Colleges."
There are those who, having felt the influence of this ancient School,
and being smit with its splendour and its sweetness, ask wistfully, if
never again it is to be Catholic, or whether at least some footing for
Catholicity may not be found there. All honour and merit to the
charitable and zealous hearts who so inquire! Nor can we dare to tell
what in time to come may be the inscrutable purposes of that grace,
which is ever more comprehensive than human hope and aspiration. But
for me, from the day I left its walls, I never, for good or bad, have
had anticipation of its future; and never for a moment have I had a
wish to see again a place, which I have never ceased to love, and where
I lived for nearly thirty years. Nay, looking at the general state of
things at this day, I desiderate for a School of the Church, if an
additional School is to be granted to us, a more central position than
Oxford has to show. Since the age of Alfred and of the first Henry,
the world has grown, from the west and south of Europe, into four or
five continents; and I look for a city less inland than that old
sanctuary, and a country closer upon the highway of the seas. I look
towards a land both old and young; old in its Christianity, young in
the promise of its future; a nation, which received grace before the
Saxon came to Britain, and which has never quenched it; a Church, which
comprehends in its history the rise and fall of Canterbury and York,
which Augustine and Paulinus found, and Pole and Fisher left behind
them. I contemplate a people which has had a long night, and will have
an inevitable day. I am turning my eyes towards a hundred years to
come, and I dimly see the island I am gazing on, become the road of
passage and union between two hemispheres, and the centre of the world.
I see its inhabitants rival Belgium in populousness, France in vigour,
and Spain in enthusiasm; and I see England taught by advancing years to
exercise in its behalf that good sense which is her characteristic
towards every one else. The capital of that prosperous and hopeful
land is situate in a beautiful bay and near a romantic region; and in
it I see a flourishing University, which for a while had to struggle
with fortune, but which, when its first founders and servants were dead
and gone, had successes far exceeding their anxieties. Thither, as to
a sacred soil, the home of their fathers, and the fountain-head of
their Christianity, students are flocking from East, West, and South,
from America and Australia and India, from Egypt and Asia Minor, with
the ease and rapidity of a locomotion not yet discovered, and last,
though not least, from England,--all speaking one tongue, all owning
one faith, all eager for one large true wisdom; and thence, when their
stay is over, going back again to carry over all the earth "peace to
men of good will."