will proceed to state what occurs to us as the most probably successful method of elevating the aim and standard of academical learning.

It should not be overlooked, in considering this subject, that the constitution of society in this country has altered since it became so much a commercial one, and that this circumstance cannot have been without its consequences on our great universities. At an early period the university teachers were, for the most part, Romish Churchmen, who were accordingly doomed to a life of celibacy, or at least they seldom ventured ostentatiously to acknowledge their offspring. The worldly necessities of these studious men were too limited to lead them to look to the pecuniary results of their labours, even had the times in which they lived made these in this way available to any important extent. At a later period, again, the wants of those few profound students who protested against the tenets of the Romish Church, were not extensive, and their lives made it evident that the world was devoid of power to draw them from the task, which has given to some of them an earthly immortality. Now, however, matters are so far changed, that a professor having a family and its accompanying obligations, finds it incumbent upon him to lay up money as a necessary provision for them in these times, when no profession can be entered into without its aid. In former days the chief emoluments attached to a university chair were derived from its endowments, and these, at the time alluded to, were ample for supplying the requirements of its occupant. Now, however, the professors, looking chiefly to the fees paid by the students' patrons-especially if the patronage be vested in a city corporation-look to a popular teacher, who again has an interest so strong in pleasing the taste of his youthful audience, as may possibly lead him to deviate from his strict duty, without being altogether aware of his doing so.

The late Lord Bridgewater, whose knowledge of mankind was even more extensive than his learning, saw the growing evil, and did all that an individual could do to arrest its progress. Now, at all events, there does not exist a doubt that the intention of his princely bequest was to employ the greatest talent in the country in producing one able essay on some subject of a character at once dignified and useful to man, as, indeed, the object of all secular study and of all learning ought to be the benefit of our species. But his benevolent intention was unhappily frustrated by the interference, again, of that molten calf,' whose influence, so far from being confined to a heathen soil, possesses so injurious

an influence even on the literature of England, that the Bridgewater trustees were led by this influence, so far to forget their duty as to deviate from the noble testator's instructions, by dividing the ten thousand pounds, which he intended should be the reward of him amongst the learned who should produce the most perfect treatise. They discovered that they could get ten of the first scholars in the country to do each their little best for a thousand pounds, and accordingly, with a view to getting, as they imagined, full value for the money, preferred this to an open competition, which should have employed the matured intellect of England for a lifetime, and, by which alone, could have been in any degree attained the philanthropic design of the donor. But such instances of private liberality and enlightenment as were displayed by Lord Bridgewater can be of rare occurrence, and the country need not look to these for more than occasional aid in the cause.

The universities must be re-endowed, The difficulty, amounting almost to an impossibility, of obtaining a grant in this age of immediate utility and enjoyment, for any purpose not directly intended for the furtherance of these two objects, we are fully alive to. But we would not be discouraged in a cause so good. Necessity, indeed, will bring this about, or lead to such other great change in the constitution of our universities as will cause them to yield literary fruit, more mentally beneficial than that which now emanates from the press. Honours and grants may be conferred on those men, or on their families, if their works are posthumous, who, by the well digested products of their matured genius, have rendered some durable service to the literature of their country. The changed state of society demands that this should be done. If a man of talent dedicate himself to the law, title, rank, and wealth, are the rewards held out to perseverance and success. In the army and navy the same encouragement are offered. Even in the study of medicine, which cannot yet be strictly defined as a science, the minor honours are occasional, and wealth frequent; while the literary man of our day, whose power for good or for evil on unborn millions may be greater than that of either the statesman or the warrior, may possibly live unknown and in poverty, if he does not follow the adopted deity of his age and country, and sacrifice to it, by pandering to the present vitiated standard of literary taste. We say, that rank and wealth should be held out as incentives to men of genius, to devote their lives to the production of works evincing long and profound study and merit sufficient to make them of high

and enduring importance. We have alluded to the field and the bar as spheres yielding their legitimate attractions, and we may also point to the Church as holding out similar inducements. No one can suppose that by elevation of rank, or increase of wealth, a Churchman devoted heart and soul to the cause of religion, will better perform the sacred duties of a pastor. Neither was that the country's expectation. The intention was to draw thereby those of the highest order of talent within the pale of the Church, to watch over the purity of her tenets and her laws, and generally over the religious interests of the kingdom. And if this principle of action be admissible in sacred affairs, who can doubt either the wisdom or the necessity of it in matters affecting the general literature of the country, and its moral consequences on the people. Some means must assuredly be taken to purify the fountain head of literary knowledge, and although its streams may still occasionally become sullied in their current, they will yet never be so unwholesome in effect and tendency, but that they will leven the flood of literary matter with which the country is inundated.

Our title merely held out to the reader only a glance on this important subject, and we must not exceed the limit implied. That some steps will ere long be taken in regard to it, by those entrusted with the well-being of this great nation, we have no doubt whatever, although the effect of much that at present emanates from the press is becoming yearly more difficult to arrest or control. Let the Government, then, at once, look to the condition of the country's literature, with the determination to use their influence to apply a small portion of her pecuniary resources, to make more benefical its present state, and to brighten its future prospects; and notwithstanding the declamatory speeches we sometimes hear in Parliament about retrenchment in the State expenditure, we feel confident that a well digested scheme brought forward in Parliament, having this for its object, would be hailed with delight by the intelligent portion of the people, and be supported by an overwhelming majority of their representatives. Such a measure being calculated to elevate and dignify the public mind, would not be received as one 'of party or of sect,' but the common interest of every man in Britain.'

Common jealousy between the sexes is degrading to human nature. It is hating and quarrelling about an indulgence, which the merely irrational creation most hate and quarrel concerning.

THE MAYNOOTH COLLEGE QUESTION.

THE elements of popular agitation are extremely capricious. It is seldom they are roused into efficient action for any vital object of general concernment. Yet there is no dearth of objects of this description, ripe for decision as it were, and requiring only a unanimous and energetic expression of public opinion, to be made productive of undeniable benefits.

For example, Free Trade has been long struggling for mastery over error and monopoly. Its claims upon attention are all but unquestionable-the principle has been accredited by the highest intelligence of all parties; with its diffusion is intimately connected universal peace and universal abundance; yet it meets with no very ready and hearty welcome, and were it not for the persevering exertions of a few able advocates, it may be doubted whether it would not sink under general apathy, or be overpowered by an active but limited antagonist interest.

For years very laudable inquiries have been in progress, and many able reports have been made, on the state of the labouring classes, from which it is manifest that grievous internal maladies pervade the community, notwithstanding the existence of partial opulence and a glittering outside splendour. It is clear from these inquiries, that partly in the manufacturing, and almost universally in the agricultural, districts, that labour is not remunerative; that wages are inadequate to procure needful sustenance; that the masses, for the most part from indigence or ignorance, are reduced to a state of extreme, almost unequalled, misery; that the natural term of their lives is abridged one-third or one-fourth ; and that, from the crowded and unhealthy state in which they live, their habits are uncleanly, productive of disease, immoral, and criminal.

These are real national evils, increasing and menacing, about the existence of which there can be no doubt, since they are almost at every one's door, and within every body's observation. They are, too, in the main, medicable evilsevils that may be alleviated, if not cured, by better sanitary regulations, better police, and better moral culture. But they make no stir-no strong or abiding impression respecting them can be made upon the community. The religious world, to whom they particularly appeal to whose cure the poor, depraved, and miserable almost exclusively pertainare silent, lukewarm, and indifferent. They do not agitate for them; rouse no general sympathy; nor, like their Catholic

predecessors in the pastoral office, try to move the great men of the land to act mercifully and considerately towards the unhappy serfs and dependants upon their domains, or in their immediate neighbourhoods.

Yet recent experience attests that the Clergy generally have no aversion to popular inflammation. Of late years, all the internal war, battle, and strife of the country has been of their own making-of their own getting up. It is not a great while ago an intense commotion was raised for the abrogation of church-rates. More recently, England and France seemed on the verge of hostilities from some religious jealousy, or some contumely put on the missionary Pritchard in Otaheite. North and south the island has been convulsed by ritual or theological controversies. In Scotland, the Established Church has been rent in twain upon the old debateable issue that divided the Pope and Henry VIII.,-namely, the supremacy of lay or ecclesiastical authority. In the English Church, the split has been almost as great, but up to the present without actual separation; turning upon rubrical observances, upon the use of the surplice, upon bowing at the name of Jesus, upon the placing of the candlesticks on the altar, and upon the natural or non-natural sense of subscription to the Articles. These may be all vital questions, worth all the heat, schism, and polemical conflict that has risen upon them; upon this point we shall offer no opinion, further than by observing, that according to our plain practical sense and feeling, they have not, at least, such urgent claims upon consideration as the squalor and semi-barbarism of the mass of the people.

But of this the men of peace, our pastoral guides, take little heed-do not agitate en masse and organized. The great machinery of public excitement is not put in motion. The Anglican prelacy do not leave their thrones and palaces. The collegiate and cathedral chapters, and the rectors and vicars are quiescent. Even the three denominations of Protestant Dissenters' are mute, and the Wesleyan Conference stirs not. None of the galvanic wires of popular stimulation are touched. No leading men are spoken to, to take the chair; no bustling solicitor-no fashionable physician or provincial newspaper editor-to whom notoriety is profit, is called upon to preside. Subscriptions are not collected, nor the walls placarded, Exeter Hall is not gorged to the ceiling, nor the streets of London thronged with eager sweltering deputies' black, white, and grey-the elect of local fame -from the country. Yet the cause is urgent-it is great; for it is the cause of some millions of British peasants and