es are so superstitious
that I will take care that they shall be performed in a chapel with a
leaky roof and a dirty floor. By all means let us keep her a college,
provided only that it be a shabby one. Let us support those who are
intended to teach her doctrines and to administer her sacraments to the
next generation, provided only that every future priest shall cost us
less than a foot soldier. Let us board her young theologians; but let
their larder be so scantily supplied that they may be compelled to break
up before the regular vacation from mere want of food. Let us lodge
them; but let their lodging be one in which they may be packed like pigs
in a stye, and be punished for their heterodoxy by feeling the snow and
the wind through the broken panes." Is it possible to conceive anything
more absurd or more disgraceful? Can anything be clearer than this, that
whatever it is lawful to do it is lawful to do well? If it be right that
we should keep up this college at all, it must be right that we should
keep it up respectably. Our national dignity is concerned. For this
institution, whether good or bad, is, beyond all dispute, a very
important institution. Its office is to form the character of those who
are to form the character of millions. Whether we ought to extend any
patronage to such an institution is a question about which wise and
honest men may differ. But that, as we do extend our patronage to such
an institution, our patronage ought to be worthy of the object, and
worthy of the greatness of our country, is a proposition from which I am
astonished to hear any person dissent.

It is, I must say, with a peculiarly bad grace that one of the members
for the University to which I have the honour to belong (The Honourable
Charles Law, Member for the University of Cambridge.), a gentleman who
never thought himself bound to say a word or to give a vote against
the grant of nine thousand pounds, now vehemently opposes the grant
of twenty-six thousand pounds as exorbitant. When I consider how
munificently the colleges of Cambridge and Oxford are endowed, and with
what pomp religion and learning are there surrounded; when I call to
mind the long streets of palaces, the towers and oriels, the venerable
cloisters, the trim gardens, the organs, the altar pieces, the solemn
light of the stained windows, the libraries, the museums, the galleries
of painting and sculpture; when I call to mind also the physical
comforts which