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 more. They were enough for local convenience. They were enough to excite emulation and display slightly different tendencies. Attempts to add to the number were rigorously suppressed. It seems as if the notion of two parties, to keep one another in order, was an ideal of early growth, and was dimly felt in the domain of learning before it was extended to the domain of politics. Anyhow England looked coldly on the New Learning till it forced its way into the Universities and proved its practical utility. When it had thus attracted attention, had shown its power, and had declared its combativeness, it received ready help. There was a desire to give it a fair chance, and allow it to prove its mettle in the places where questions respecting learning ought naturally to be decided.

Perhaps one cause of the lethargy which certainly settled on the Universities in the fifteenth century was an uneasy feeling that the intellectual future belonged to the Humanists, who lived outside their influence, and whom they could not assimilate. The Oxford Hellenists reassured men's minds of their loyalty to their Alma Mater, and a system of University extension was begun in consequence. In this Cambridge slowly and tentatively, with an eye to strictly practical results, took the lead under the influence of John Fisher. He was backed by a powerful patron, the Lady Margaret, whose generosity he cautiously diverted into academic channels. He began on a small scale with an object of immediate usefulness, the foundation of divinity professorships at Oxford and Cambridge, which should aim at teaching pulpit eloquence. On this point the adherents of the Old