aspiration which distinguished the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (an æra which may justly dispute with the fifteenth the honourable title of that of the revival of learning), crowded with eager pupils the popular lectures of Abelard at Paris, of the Croyland monks at Cambridge, and of Vacarius* at Oxford,—and thus appear to have laid the foundations of those celebrated Universities, if we endeavour to disentangle their authentic history from the mass of fabulous matter beneath which it hath been obscured. Far from us be any pretensions of rivalry to those venerable and illustrious establishments: but we may surely, without presumption, draw from the analogy I have pointed out, the hope that our Institution will also be found among those which, to borrow the words of a philosophical historian, "Society by a sort of elective attraction seems to select from among the many objects presented to it, as having an affinity

*It has been indeed often asserted, that Alfred restored the schools of Oxford, which according to this account had an earlier Britannic celebrity. A passage in Parker's edition of the contemporary biography of Alfred, by Asser, affords the foundation of this assertion: but the most recent critical examinations have left no doubt of the interpolation of the passage in question, as will be rendered fully evident whenever the anxiously expected critical edition of the early monuments of our history, now preparing under the superintendance of Mr. Petrie, shall see the light. The archæology of our Universities at one period particularly engaged my attention; and I have never found any claim to an antiquity earlier than the close of the twelfth century, which would bear the test of critical examination. The Chronicle of Ingulph of Croyland, indeed, appears to allude to the schools of Oxford in the time of Edward the Confessor; but an able writer in the Quarterly Review for June 1826, has sufficiently exposed the spuriousness of this composition,

with it, and easily combining with it, in its state at the time*."

But if such considerations lead me generally to rejoice in the rise of similar Institutions,-in that established in this City I cannot but feel peculiar interest. The memory of many gratifying friendships here formed, of much cordial kindness here experienced, during the years of my residence in the neighbourhood,-must engage all my warmest feelings in favour of objects which appear so well calculated to advance the intellectual character of this important city.

But above all, I have (as I have said) peculiar gratification in addressing you on the present occasion; because the purpose for which we are now assembled proves, that while we are properly engaged in cultivating the noblest faculties which the Father of all Lights has bestowed on the creatures whom his all-wise and all-bountiful Providence hath made partakers of the most excellent gift of reason,-no culpable neglect has been suffered to render our designs imperfect in that which properly considered ought to form their great final aim; the directing that reason towards its highest object, the knowledge of its Divine Author; the object for which, as the great apostle forcibly reminded the most intellectual people of antiquity, "God created of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth,--determining the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation, that they should seek the Lord if haply they might feel after him and

* Mackintosh's History of England, vol. i. p. 246.

find him." As connected with your classical studies I may indeed remind you, that the most illustrious philosopher of the people thus addressed, while under the light of natural reason alone, and even when most warmly urging the necessity of separating the great principles of religion, which Ĥe, who hath never left himself entirely without a witness in the minds of his creatures, hath implanted in that reason, from the absurd and impure mixture of mythological fable:-I may, I say, remind you, that this leading philosopher most earnestly inculcated the necessity of making these religious principles the very basis of every sound system of education, which could qualify its pupils for properly discharging any of the political obligations of civil society. And I may cite an interesting example of the manner in which these dictates of a sound philosophy became heightened by the influence of Revelation, from a distinguished writer of Alexandria, who, to an intimate acquaintance with the speculations of the philosopher just quoted, added the faith which he inherited from Abraham, to whose race he belonged: I mean Philo Judæus, a contemporary of our Blessed Lord, from the pure source of whose doctrines I cannot resist the persuasion (so obviously suggested by his language) he had also drunk. This writer has the following passage, of which the very words seem expressly and remarkably applicable to Institutions like the present.

"It is proper for persons who form themselves into a Society for the advancement of knowledge, to long to behold the Supreme Being; and, since he cannot be discerned, his image the most sa

cred Word [by whom he has revealed himself to us], and, in due subordination to him, the most perfect work of objects of sense, this universe." –Philo Judæus, lib. ix.

And thus may our endeavours to advance the noble cause of intellectual instruction, and to afford to the rational powers of our pupils a scientific and literary cultivation adequate to their full developement, be exalted, and, if I may so speak, sanctified, by our including in our aims, the acquisition of that higher and heavenly knowledge to which, assuredly, every rightly understood system of the education of immortal beings ought to be rendered subservient. There is, indeed, a natural analogy between the state of moral and preparatory discipline under which mortals are placed in this probationary scene as introductory to a future stage of being, and the education which prepares the youth for the purposes of the man. Ought we then ever to suffer this, our preliminary stage of instruction, to be destitute of all direction to the great ultimate end of our being? This surely must, to right reason, ever appear its highest as well as holiest object.

There is a strict accordance also between the most important subjects of instruction to which our establishment can be devoted, and their application to the great truths of religion: for if we turn to Natural Science, or Classical Literature,-who can read aright the great volume of Nature, without pausing at every page to admire with the full devotion of every faculty the splendid and countless proofs of design; the myriad combinations, each regulated by consummate wisdom and directed

by infinite benevolence, which they every where exhibit? Insensible must that mind be, and incapable of every high and expansive thought, which can intelligently survey these works of creation, and not be led to adore Him, "whose goodness beyond thought and power divine" all these proclaim. But I have advisedly used the phrase, "intelligently survey;" for although these glorious works speak plainly to all, even to the uneducated; though there be no tongue nor language whither their voice hath not gone forth,-yet undoubtedly much of the irresistible force of the inferences to be derived from them must be comparatively lost to minds which have not been opened by Scientific Instruction. Again, as to Classical Literature; what more interesting field of inquiry does it present to us, than that important chapter in the history of the human mind-the philosophical speculations of the various schools of antiquity? But where, also, can we better discover the natural aspirations and requisitions of that mind, its wants and its weakness, and the hopeless obscurity on the most important points of the best reason, until assisted by revelation, than where we see the most splendid examples of that reason, thus finding no end," in wandering mazes lost." For even when we find them laying down as the very fundamental principle of their systems, the existence of a Divine Mind, and justly reprobating the fictions of the vulgar and poetical mythology as palpably false and unworthy of the gods,-and cannot therefore suppose for a moment that they placed any faith in these gross absurdities; still less will the accurate ob