less," and, in so doing, to establish a
vital and effective relation between themselves and the men of the
working-classes below them, they looked round for opportunities to work
in the education of _men_. Anybody who remembers "Amyas Leigh" will
remember how earnestly Charles Kingsley there presses the theory that
most of what we learn as children should be left to be learned by men,
as it was in the days of Queen Bess. I suppose that Maurice's "knot of
parsons and such like" shared that view. At all events, they lectured to
Mechanics' Institutes, and did other such wish-wash work, which is not
good for much, except for the motive it shows; and having found that
out, they were all the more willing to join in arrangements more
definite and profitable. According to Mr. Maurice, the formation of the
People's College in Sheffield started them on the plan of a college,
and determined them, as far as they could, to give consistency to
their dreams by carrying out the plan of an English college in their
arrangements for working-men.

At this point I must beg the accomplished company of readers to
recollect what an English college is. In its organization, and in much
of its consequent _esprit du corps_, it is as different from an American
college as an Odd-Fellows' lodge is from a country academy. The
difference is also of precisely the same sort. The man or the boy who
connects himself with an English college is, in theory, still the
student of a thousand years ago, who came on foot to Oxford or
Cambridge, because he had heard, in the wilds of Mercia or of Wessex,
that there were some books at those places,--and that some Alfred or
Ethelred or Eldred had given some privileges to students coming there.
When he has arrived, he joins one or other of the societies of students
whom he may find there, just as the Mercian Athelstan may have done.
From the moment that the established society has tested him,--and the
tests are very mild,--he is admitted as a member of a fraternity,
sharing the privileges of that fraternity, and, to a certain extent, its
duties. He is at first a junior member, it is true. Among his duties,
therefore, will be obedience to some of the senior members, and respect
to all. But none the less is he a neophyte member of a corporation which
extends back hundreds of years perhaps,--he is a co-proprietor of its
honors and privileges, is responsible for their preservation, and is,
from the first, inoculated with