party a due portion of his respect. Happily for myself, if not satisfactorily to bigots of any party, I undertake to plead the cause of liberty and literature, not of party-politics, and domineering, denouncing controversies. I am writing a history circumscribed within facts, in which but little room will be left for panegyrics, none for invectives. CHAP. IX. DISSENTIENTS, HERE seems a proper stop for our history: for we are now come to that period, when our University settles in its present form, encircled with privileges and statutes; producible, like the English constitution, as it now exists; but, like that, fluctuating, and depending, as we have hitherto seen it, on public opinion, for what it may hereafter become. But, though this may be a proper stop, it would be a bad stand. Our University history admits of more variety than can be detailed in limits so circumscribed, or than I shall attempt to introduce. Its economy has never been realized, and some of its statutes, in the very moment of their novelty, became obsolete. It has been said, that Archbishop Abbot's, Yield, and they will be pleased at last, was a great miscarriage; and that Archbishop Laud's, Resolve, for there is no end of yielding, was great policy. But be the policy as great as it may, old customs, like old laws, must yield to natural feeling and public sentiment. From whatever the mind revolts, there must be a falling off; it cannot settle, like that eternal truth which cleaves to our hearts; it must either sink into disuse, or become matter of unmeaning form. History possesses its quiet description of facts, its distinct periods, its regular round of story. These we 10 nomin habe: Simon Paßaus Nam quòd fis fidus divini cultor ageli Ingentis pecoris cus fos, ingentior ipse, look for, of course: we like information, and are pleased to hear of things as they are. But what gives interest to history is, that, which sometimes disturbs our repose; the bold projecting points, which fix the attention, and command our admiration; its divisions, dissentions, revolutions, and wars: as in the natural world, we may expect what is orderly; are pleased with the gliding stream, with the spacious meadow, with gardens that are decorated with flowers, and fields standing thick with corn. But then there's the burst of elements! -we gaze with wonder at the storm; and are carried out of ourselves by the earthquake and volcano, which bears away all around it. In nothing is there more formality than in accounts of the establishment and routine of public institutions; and the discipline of a university is almost proverbial: I have aimed to keep in the right-on, regular track: but universities are concerned with that mighty microcosm, the little world, of man; and what unfolds ampler varieties, what displays greater energies, than the human mind? Hence it is, that literature, which has its private pursuits, its calm studies, its enthusiastic dreams, its philosophic repose, has, also, its public disputes, its bold innovations, its religious dissentions, and its oppositions to established authorities. And the circumstances which seem to interrupt its order, and to break in on its quiet, are frequently those, which, by letting in a little variety, and by giving it something of a secular cast, render it more acceptable to the world, and give a character to its history. And even those who are wedded to the retirement of academical life, like the occasional bustle, the busy operations, and the more tumultuous proceedings, as 12 |