Page:Founder's Day in War Time.djvu/33

 men—the one born and both bred—and the legendary fragments of their talk warrant a belief that their converse, whatever adventitious graces it lacked, had in it some pith. Although the age to which they belonged was awaking to the claims of physical science, of Faulkner at least we know that he was specially desirous to encourage the critical study of sacred literature; while to his fellow-trustees the most suitable acknowlegment of his free gift of the land and buildings first occupied by the College seemed the endowment of a chair of political economy—the chair afterwards held by Stanley Jevons, to whose teaching the highest British statesmanship lent a ready ear. Neither the conception of the Founders, as I may call them, of Owens College nor the system carried out from the first by its administrators, involved or implied any thought of confining the instruction given there to professional 26