was sixteen, recommended him in the meantime to the instruction of his college; the forgetfulness of his college to instruct, his own forgetfulness to return, and the forgetfulness of the Vice-Chancellor to send for him; his groping his way, unaided and untaught, into the dangerous mazes of controversy, and his bewilderment into the errors of the Church of Rome.

We call to mind the Fellows of Magdalen-those decent, easy men-into whose common-room he was, as a gentleman-commoner, of right admitted; their days filled by a series of uniform employments-the chapel and the hall, the coffee-house and the common-room— till they retired, weary and well satisfied, to a long slumber; their conversation that stagnated in a round of college business, Tory politics, personal anecdotes, and private scandal; their dull and deep potations, and their toasts that were not expressive of the most lively loyalty for the House of Hanover. We cail to mind the tradition that prevailed that some of his predecessors had spoken Latin declamations in the hall, and the total absence in his time of public exercises and examinations. We remember, too, that in the University itself he could. find nothing to make up for the shameless neglect of his college; for in the University the greater part of the

public professors had for these many years given up altogether even the pretence of teaching.1

But just as may be the picture that we shall thus raise before ourselves of Magdalen College, just as may be the picture that we shall raise of the University of Oxford as a whole, we shall wander very far from the truth if we go on to infer that every one of the numerous colleges and halls was a second Magdalen. Had Gibbon been entered at some other college, the University of Oxford would not, to her great and lasting disgrace, have been disclaimed by one of the greatest of her sons. There were bad colleges and indolent tutors in his time as there are bad colleges and indolent tutors now. Though doubtless there were many more bad colleges and many more indolent tutors in those days, when the University, neither by examination nor by any other way, exercised the slightest control over the studies of the

1 'What do you think of being Greek Professor at one of our Universities? It is a very pretty sinecure, and requires very little knowledge (much less than I hope you have already) of that language.'-Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son (January 15, 1748). Cumberland, who entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1746, had the same kind of tutors as Gibbon. His first tutor left him to choose and pursue his studies as he liked. From his second, whose zeal or whose piety was afterwards rewarded with a bishopric, he never received a single lecture.-Memoirs of Richard Cumberland, vol. i. p. 91.

students. Richard Lovell Edgeworth, who entered Corpus Christi College eight years after Gibbon left Magdalen, and who was not likely to have loved a place merely because it was venerable, bears high testimony to the merits of his college. 'I applied assiduously not only to my studies,' he writes, 'under my excellent tutor, but also to the perusal of the best English writers. Scarcely a day passed without my having added to my stock of knowledge some new fact or idea; and I remember with satisfaction the pleasure I then felt from the consciousness of intellectual improvement.'

More than one hundred years have passed since these men left Oxford. Magdalen can still boast of its graceful tower, its venerable cloisters, its noble hall, and Addison's Walk. Corpus, if you ask what it can show that is beautiful or venerable, must still borrow its prospect from its neighbours, and point to Merton Tower on its left and the Cathedral Tower on its right. But a second Edgeworth, perhaps, if fate were to place him there, would not boast of Magdalen, nor would a second Gibbon, if a second could arise, disclaim Corpus.

It is difficult, we must remember, at any time to arrive at a fair estimate of an ancient seat of learning. Some men are more touched with resentment when they come to learn by experience where their education was faulty

than moved by gratitude for the training they received, however judicious, considered as a whole, it may have been. Their deficiencies they attribute to their teachers, and to the system under which they were brought up. Their merits they derive from themselves alone. Some men, on the other hand, look upon their Alma Mater as a mother indeed. Her failings they will not see, much less will they avow. They are proud of being her sons, and they increase their pride by magnifying her merits. But much more difficult is it to form this estimate when we are considering an age in which party spirit ran high, and the Church brought anything but peace into the world. Johnson, in writing his 'Debates of Parliament,' always took care, as he says, that the Whig dogs came off Consciously or unconsciously judgments were formed and evidence was given in much the same way as the composition of these 'Debates' was managed. Thus, if we may trust Prideaux, Dean of Norwich, Christ Church under Dean Aldrich was, though not the worst, yet one of the worst colleges in Oxford. 'It is totally spoilt,' he wrote in one letter, and for that reason when chosen a Canon and Professor of Oriental Literature I refused to go.' In another letter he admitted that bad though it was, there was at least one other college worse. 'Whoever advised you there [to Exeter College] was no friend.

worse.

That is worse than Christ Church, for at the latter there is something of ingenuity and genteel carriage in the genius of the place, but in the other I never knew anything all the while I was at Oxford but drinking and duncery.'

If Prideaux spoke ill of Aldrich's college, Aldrich in return used to speak slightingly of Prideaux as 'an inaccurate, muddy-headed man.' If we turn from Prideaux to Hearne, we should be inclined to consider Christ Church as looked after, under Aldrich, if anything, too carefully. 'The Dean used to rise to five o'clock prayers, summer and winter. He visited the chambers of the young gentlemen on purpose to see that they employed their time in useful and commendable studies. . . . He was always for encouraging industry, learning, integrity, and whatever deserves commendation.' It is no wonder, therefore, putting aside all differences in their colleges, that not only men like Gibbon and Edgeworth who had but little in common, but also that men like Gibbon and Johnson who, widely as they differed in many things, yet were both scholars, felt so differently towards Oxford.

It is, indeed, interesting to compare the feelings of scornful indignation with which the younger of the two looked upon Oxford, with the love that the elder, through his long life, bore to his old college and his old university. In the last summer of his life, when his strength that was