are already very far from being exclusively orthodox. Books are now our real teachers. The Professor's chair is no longer of the importance that it was in the middle ages as the source of new knowledge and the organ of original thought it has been superseded for these purposes by the press. Among the list of authors recommended by the University we find Hume and Gibbon. We find Sismondi, whose writings are a good deal tinctured with the sentiments of an esprit fort. We find Hallam, whose chapters on ecclesiastical history contain remarks on religious questions, especially on the Anglican doctrine of the Eucharist, which, if delivered from a Professor's chair, would set the University in a flame. Among the authors not formally recommended by the University, but in constant use and virtually acknowledged by the examiners, is Mr. Stuart Mill, whose chapter on Social Science embodies the atheistic theory of Comte. Any writer, however heretical or sceptical, whose work is likely to be of use to the students in preparing for the examinations is sure to find his way into their hands. The book-shops too are open: there lie Essays and Reviews, and the writings of Bishop Colenso: there lie Francis Newman, Theodore Parker,

/ R4nan, Buckle, Comte: and there will lie every other

enemy of orthodoxy whose works may be commended to public curiosity either by their own merits or by the denunciations of the Bishops. When conversation turns on the religious questions of the day, it is as free in Oxford as elsewhere, possibly it is even made a little more free by the pleasure of breaking through

a nominal restraint. The antidotes, and in the immense majority of cases, the effectual antidotes to whatever is pernicious in these influences are the same which operate at home and which preserve men in the world at large. No one has yet been chimerical enough to propose any other correctives. No one

has suggested an Index Expurgatorius for the booksellers' shops or even for the authors to be recognized by the University. Oxford, with her closed degrees and her open libraries and book-shops, is a city with strongly fortified gates but with no walls. The barbican and portcullis of the middle ages still frown in the tests and in the statute enjoining Professors to 'accommodate and attemper philosophy to theology,' a worthy companion of another statute directing the clerks of the market to punish forestallers and regrators: but the adversaries of the faith, or of that self-imposed blindness which arrogates the name of faith, have free entrance at every other point.

If any tendency were really shown by Professors to abuse their chairs for the propagation of irreligion, nobody could object to the enactment of such provisions as might be requisite to put a stop to the offence. To enact statutes, or enforce that which already exists, requiring that the facts of science should be distorted by lecturers in order to adapt them to a particular creed, would be a course most undesirable on many grounds, but especially because it would manifestly bring dishonour and ridicule on religion.

The Colleges, as has been already said, stand as

regards this question on a somewhat different footing from the University. They are private foundations; though they hold their perpetual endowments only by virtue of a special license of the State, which possesses and has exercised a corresponding power of adapting their regulations from time to time to the requirements of the public good; and though, under this power, most of them have been transferred from the Roman Catholic religion, which was that of their founders, to a religion which, as it divides the world with the Roman Catholic Church as an antagonist, can scarcely be described with truth as her heir. What is of more importance, it may be said of them, while it cannot be said of the University, that they carry on a system of religious education: a system the efficacy of which is, indeed, preposterously overrated in these discussions, consisting, as it does, mainly of compulsory attendance at chapel and at theological lectures which leave very little religious impression on the mind, and bearing, as it does, a very inconsiderable proportion to home influences, and to the spontaneous religion of Christian students; yet one which cannot be called altogether nugatory, or destitute of value in the eyes of Christian parents. Thus the claim of the Nonconformists in the case of the colleges is weaker than in the case of the University, and at the same time the difficulty of meeting it is more real. On the other hand the fellowships are the great prizes of academical industry; through them only can an entrance be found to that very important part of University education which

consists in intercourse with the most intellectual society of the place; nor can any one but the holder of a fellowship settle down, after taking his degree, to the pursuit of learning and science with a full enjoyment of all appliances, and in a satisfactory position. Thus a class of students ineligible to fellowships, though eligible to the higher degrees, would still be in a disadvantageous and somewhat humiliating condition.

The question is easily settled one way by those who have made up their minds that association with any person of a different creed from their own is dangerous, offensive to Heaven, and almost polluting. It is easily settled the other way by those who have made up their minds on religious grounds, and in the interest of religion, that no difference of creed shall ever stand in the way of their intimacy or of their cooperation with any Christian, or, indeed, with any honest man. But at this moment of transition and hesitation, the minds of most men are not distinctly made up one way or the other: and therefore it would be difficult to say, as to the colleges generally, or as to any particular college, how far the different ecclesiastical elements would harmonize with each other, and whether they would unite in carrying on the work of college education with the cordiality which the public interest requires. It would be difficult also to say how far this change in their religious position would affect any special connection among the parents of students which particular colleges may have formed, though the fear of a general withdrawal from places

of education, otherwise in high repute, because they were contaminated by the presence of a few Nonconformists, seems for the reasons before stated to be absurd. Roman Catholics are probably too much addicted to sectarian exclusiveness to present themselves as candidates for fellowships in a mixed society. Otherwise, there might no doubt be a difficulty in consenting to put up with the unsocial attitude and petulant airs of sectaries who have persuaded themselves that everything in Christendom is of the earth earthy, except that Church which has most miserably soiled its spiritual essence by adulterous union with the worst powers of the earth, and by partnership, and more than partnership, in their worst crimes.

Under these circumstances there would seem on the whole to be no better course than that proposed by Mr. Bouverie in his Bill of last session, viz., to repeal the clause of the Act of Uniformity requiring Fellows of Colleges to make a declaration of Conformity at their admission, and then to leave the colleges free to deal with the question by their own powers of legislation as each of them may think fit*. This proposal received a good deal of support at Cambridge,

The three colleges which availed themselves of the power given them to amend their own statutes during the first year of the late Parliamentary Commission have the power of amending all their statutes for the future, with the consent of the Visitor. The rest, for which, the first year having expired, the Commission made ordinances by default, have the power of amending those ordinances with the consent of Her Majesty in Council, and the rest of their statutes with the consent of the Visitor.

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