avoid one whom he cannot meet with satisfaction and pleasure; the
inmate of a college comes in contact with his brethren every day. The
place of prayer, the refectory, the social board of kindly
intercourse, all well calculated to cherish and ripen feelings of
friendship, yet if unkind sentiments are lurking in the breast, only
provoke their expression, and cherish the heartburnings, and fan the
embers of discord into a flame.

In a college the first spark of unkindness, unbrotherly, anti-social
feelings, should especially be extinguished: disunion there is more
fatal to comfort and ease, and peace of mind, and the enjoyment (p. 272)
of whatever blessings might otherwise be in store, than in any other
community except that of husband and wife, parent and child, brother
and brother. To no combination of Christians would the Apostle with
greater earnestness repeat his injunction, "Love one another."

What was the immediate subject of dispute at the time when Henry
interfered with Oriel College, the Author has never been able to
discover. There is no auxiliary evidence, and the only source of
reasonable conjecture must be the internal testimony of the King's
letter itself. The epistle is an original, preserved in the Tower of
London; its date is 7th of July, and in the town of Mante. This fixes
it (with as much certainty as we can ever expect in such matters) to
the year 1419; when Henry seems to have made Mante his chief residence
for some time, and was certainly there both before and after the 7th
of July in that year.

This letter is very interesting, particularly to Oriel men, for other
reasons, and especially because it contains indisputable proof of the
position maintained by them, that not the Chancellor, nor the King by
his Chancellor, but the King himself in person, is the visitor. May
his interference on a similar occasion be never again needed! May
discord between the Head and the Fellows, or between the Fellows among
themselves, be for ever banished! But should the voice and the hand of
the visitor be ever required "to stint the controversy," the (p. 273)
visitor of this "ancient and royal house"--is the King of England
only. The letter is in itself characteristic of Henry, and affords,
probably, a fair specimen of the style of an English gentleman of that
day.

"BY THE KING.[202]

"Worshipful father in God, our right trusty and well-beloved, we
greet you well. And for as much as