gypt 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."

III. UNIVERSITY LIFE AT ATHENS

However apposite may have been the digression into which I was led when
I had got about half through the foregoing Chapter, it has had the
inconvenience of what may be called running me off the rails; and now
that I wish to proceed from the point at which it took place, I shall
find some trouble, if I may continue the metaphor, in getting up the
steam again, or if I may change it, in getting into the swing of my
subject.

It has been my desire, were I able, to bring before the reader what
Athens may have been, viewed as what we have since called a University;
and to do this, not with any purpose of writing a panegyric on a
heathen city, or of denying its many deformities, or of concealing what
was morally base in what was intellectually great, but just the
contrary, of representing things as they really were; so far, that is,
as to enable him to see what a University is, in the very constitution
of society and in its own idea, what is its nature and object, and what
it needs of aid and support external to itself to complete that nature
and to secure that object.

So now let us fancy our Scythian, or Armenian, or African, or Italian,
or Gallic student, after tossing on the Saronic waves, which would be
his more ordinary course to Athens, at last casting anchor at Piraeus.
He is of any condition or rank of life you please, and may be made to
order, from a prince to a peasant. Perhaps he is some Cleanthes, who
has been a boxer in the public games. How did it ever cross his brain
to betake himself to Athens in search of wisdom? or, if he came thither
by accident, how did the love of it ever touch his heart? But so it
was, to Athens he came with three drachms in his girdle, and he got his
livelihood by drawing water, carrying loads, and the like servile
occupations. He attached himself, of all philosophers, to Zeno the
Stoic,--to Zeno, the most high-minded, the most haughty of speculators;
and out of his daily earnings the poor scholar brought his master the
daily sum of an obolus, in payment for attending his lectures. Such
progress did he make, that on Zeno'