Page:A review of the state of the question respecting the admission of dissenters to the universities.djvu/25

23 this as a much less certain impossibility than the amalgamation in our colleges of all sects, differing as sects at present do differ from each other. But I do not see that the reviewer has pointed out in detail how this may be done: or that he has shown any real security against such a plan leading to evils which he himself paints in the strongest colours, and enlarges upon with great force.

I have no intention of entering into any discussion upon the antiquarian part of the subject, having no such acquaintance with it as in any way entitles me to do so. I am willing to accept the historical statements of the reviewer as correct, as far as matters of fact are concerned, though in assigning causes and motives his judgment is probably somewhat warped by his prejudices.

Of course, no one who has the slightest acquaintance with the history of the universities, can doubt the general fact that they existed as seats of learning, resorted to by vast numbers of students, and, as chartered bodies enjoying peculiar privileges, long before the foundation of any of the existing colleges, or any other bodies of the same kind. Walter de Merton, the inventor of the collegiate system in the reign of Henry III. founded his college in Oxford because Oxford was then a place where learning flourished, and a chartered university, his object being to give peculiar facilities to a select body of students to pursue the studies already carried on in the place. With the same