the assertion that the University itself is fatally stamped with the loose principles of the day upon this grave and anxious matter. In fact, there is nothing clearer from the evidence of the action taken within the University and in Parliament, than that efforts are really and steadily directed to extend the intellectual influence of the University, and to draw men within its power, but that those things which Catholics consider to be essential and vital points of morality, are either not provided for at all, or are treated as puerile and of mere "secondary importance."

It will be remembered that we have already contrasted the difference in tone and principle between Catholic and nonCatholic homes. If this difference is to be erased in the future —if we who have the faith and the Sacraments are to aspire to no higher a perfection than to that of those who have them not, then let the anxious father and the pious mother send their son to Oxford; but let them first read the following words in the Report of the Oxford Commission, and then ask themselves whether this is the social norma they wish to work towards. The Report runs thus :

"The real causes of extravagance," says Professor Walker, are the state of society in general, and the weakness of parents who wish their sons to be like other young men." "A different tone of social morality," says Mr. Congreve, "on the two points of extravagance and idleness must prevail both at Oxford and in the country generally, before there can be any effectual check on these evils. Among the higher classes of English society public opinion on these points is very lax. To spend more than their income, to waste their time, and to be moderately disorderly in conduct, have been and still are so usual in ordinary English education of the upper classes, that they are tolerated by a very indulgent treatment in society-treated as privileges of the rich and easy classes, and only complained of by the great majority of such classes when they lead to too marked a failure or to too heavy bills.” "Some parents who are rich, but not distinguished by rank, are too often glad to place their sons on a par, as regards expenditure, at least, with those of higher birth, or even to give them a larger allowance. Some even of those who are not rich prefer an expensive college, and do not greatly repine at follies committed in aristocratic company."-Report, p. 28.

We read in the touching history of Arnold's life, that he used to weep by himself over the innocent boy as he entered public school, knowing for certain that his corruption was at hand. We do not know whether Mr. Pattison weeps over Oxford, but his words are remarkable: "It is at least doubtful," he says, "whether our corrupting and enervating influences do not preponderate over those which invigorate and elevate the mind."

After this, we feel almost inclined to ask ourselves whether there is not some truth in the terrible principle laid down by Mr. J. S. Mill in his inaugural lecture at St. Andrew's, when he enunciated that "it is beyond the power of schools and universities to educate morally or religiously." What Dr. Arnold and Mr. Pattison have implied of Rugby and Oxford respectively, Mr. Mill declares of all schools and universities.

Three classes of objections may be alleged to which we reply with brevity.

I. It is urged that whatever is said against Oxford may be equally urged as an argument against entering the navy, the army, medicine, the law, or the civil service.

Now, firstly, life at Oxford is not a profession, but an education and Oxford prepares men, directly, for no profession, save that of Anglican Orders.

Secondly, Catholics are obliged to enter professions in order to earn their bread, but Catholics are not obliged to be educated at Oxford.

Thirdly, and far most importantly, as it seems to us, there are intellectual dangers peculiar to Oxford from the fact of its being a seat of education and of literary and philosophic inquiry, which do not at all exist in any of the professions. We must insist upon this, even though we trespass on the patience of our reader.

Dr. Newman,* in speaking of the office of a University to enlarge the mind, says that

The communication of knowledge is either a condition or the means of the sense of enlargement or enlightenment but it is equally plain that such communication is not the whole of the process. The enlargement consists, not merely in the passive reception into the mind of a number of ideas hitherto unknown to it, but in the mind's simultaneous action upon and towards and among those new ideas, which are rushing in upon it. It is the action of a formative power, reducing to order and meaning the matter of our acquirements; it is the making the objects of our knowledge subjectively our own .. it is a digestion of what we receive into the substance of our previous state of thought; and without this no enlargement is said to follow. There is no enlargement, unless there be a comparison of ideas one with another, as they come before the mind, and a systematizing of them ... A mind thus enlarged possesses the knowledge, not only of things, but also of their mutual and true relations: knowledge, not merely considered as acquirement, but as philosophy. Accordingly, when this analytical, distributive, harmonizing process is away, the mind experiences no enlarge

ment.

* Discourse V. The Scope and Nature of University Education.

From this remarkable passage we perceive what is the distinctive office of a University education towards the mind.

Now, what would be the result to the mind in this "analytical, distributive, harmonizing process;" what would be the estimate of the "mutual and true relations of things," if in the communication of knowledge the chief branch of knowledge were ignored? What, if the most important branch of all, the knowledge of Christ and His Church, were kept out of sight, and the mind left only with that perception of it which it had acquired in boyhood? The result would be that the mind, so enlarged would form its views, and would harmonize its opinions and judgments, leaving religion practically on one side. It would assimilate only that which it had digested. The intellectual draught of knowledge, which was the "condition or the means of its enlargement," had been composed with the principal ingredient of a philosophical knowledge of religion left out; and the consequence is that the truths of his religion have no weight or place in the mind and views of an intellectual man, thus formed. He is a cultivated man, but not a cultivated Catholic. And he who has not been expressly and laboriously trained in the intellectual principles of Catholicism will, at a place like Oxford, imbibe subtly and unconsciously, but for that very reason with the more deadly effect, intellectual principles abhorrent to Catholicism.

But now consider more particularly the case, not of ordinary youths, but of those pre-eminent for active intellect; of those, therefore, who will mainly influence the new generation towards good or towards evil. And here we adopt not only the thought, but almost the words of another writer on this subject in the October number of 1864.

In a University such as Oxford a vigorous intellectual cultivation is given to such minds as these; but it is accompanied by no proportionate knowledge of Christian doctrine. and of the unapproachable intellectual greatness of Catholicism. Add to this two most certain and palpable facts: first, the Catholic student is brought into familiar intercourse with the most able and influential Protestants of his own age whom England produces; and these are unanimous in regarding the maxims of the Papacy, theological, social, and political, as a synonym for everything which is narrow, retrograde, and imbecile. Secondly, his religious knowledge is imperfect, his principles are not yet firmly rooted (as is evident from the very fact that his education is still in progress); the intrinsic bias of the intellect, apart from Divine grace, is intensely opposed to intellectual submission of any kind, and intellectual VOL. IX.—NO. XVIII. [New Series.]

2 F

pride is the deadly enemy of docility to the Holy See, and is the high road to apostacy. Nevertheless his intellect expands and strengthens; and as his habitual associates are intellectual men, who make intellectual independence their very boast, he too necessarily becomes like them, intellectually proud and independent of authority. He becomes angry, or grows contemptuous, or chafes under the teaching of the Holy See; for he has not studied and mastered her system, and at the same time her teaching and her spirit are definite and practical, Thus and always demand his submission and interior assent. his intellectual excellency becomes the occasion of his inward rebellion against the Church, perhaps of his open apostacy.

Now, nothing in the least like this holds in the case of a profession. It has been remarked that men of uncultivated minds possess a singular power of contemplating moral phenomena without forming on them any judgment of their own: they are not tempted to intellectual pride in the way that men of vigorously cultivated minds are.

They receive, as Dr. Newman says, in a passive, otiose, unfruitful way, . Like seafaring men the various facts which are forced upon them who range from one end of the earth to the other; . . . they sleep, and rise up, and they find themselves, now in Europe, now in Asia; they see visions of great cities and wild regions; . . . and nothing which meets them, carries them forward or backward, to any idea beyond itself. Nothing has a drift or relation; nothing has a history or a promise. Everything stands by itself, and comes and goes in its turn, like the shifting scenes of a show, which leave the spectator where he was.

Just so, the ordinary professions and avocations of life may leave a man, with regard to all things, except those which directly belong to his profession. But not so the University, which professes to form and enlarge his mind, to form the judgment and to teach it the "true and mutual relations and harmony of things." You see, therefore, how fundamentally different must be the effect upon the mind of the action of a University, and the partial and fragmentary teaching of a profession.

II. Next, as to the prospect of Oxford being converted to Catholicity through Catholics frequenting it for education; the idea is fond and futile. Even were our young men saints, they could not be recommended to embark on such an undertaking. Saints would not attempt it by such a method. S. Gregory, the Divine, speaking of himself and of his companion, S. Basil, during the perilous period of their

We knew only two streets, and chiefly the first of these, which led us to the Church, and to the holy teachers and doctors who there attended the service of the altar, and nourished the flock of Christ with the food of life. The other street with which we were acquainted, but which we held in much less esteem, was the road to the schools, and to our masters in the sciences. We left to others the streets which led to the theatre, to spectacles, feastings, and diversions. We made it our only and great affair; it was our only aim, and all our glory, to be called, and to be Christians We did not keep company with students that were impious, rude, or impertinent, but with those that were the best and the most peaceable, and with those whose conversation brought us much profit, being persuaded that it is an illusion to seek the company of sinners, on pretence to reform or convert them; it is far more to be feared that they will communicate their poison to us than that we shall impart to them our virtue.*

These are remarkable words indeed; not only because they come from the lips of so great a Doctor and Saint-a man versed in the knowledge of the world; but because we know aliunde that in spite of these watchful precautions S. Basil had become so touched with pride and conceit through the influence of the University, that had it not been for the tearful prayers and influence of his sister, S. Macrina, who induced him to abandon the schools, he never would have become a Saint, or merited from the Church the title of "the Great."

M. de Montalembert has set forth, in his work on the "Monks of the West," that paganism and the religious errors fostered in the national academies of the empire were destroyed not so much by the great Fathers and teachers of the Church as by the action of Divine Providence, which broke them up with the empire, by the hordes of barbarians from the North. These settled down with simplicity of mind and heart, and received from the Church, chiefly through the teaching of the Religious Orders, the pure doctrines of Christianity.

S. Jerome's writings are full of anger and sorrow over the way in which the few Christians who frequented the State Universities insensibly imbibed Pagan principles, and the undermining effect of popular Paganism upon the Christian people.

We see little prospect of converting Oxford and Cambridge to the authority of the Catholic Church: they yearly travel to a greater distance from her teaching. They become more. contemptuously indifferent to supernatural faith, more rationalistic, more latitudinarian; and they gladly receive into their bosom every form of creed or of unbelief. No doubt, a com

*S. Greg., Theol. Or., 43.