III. UNIVERSITIES

[38]Formby's Visit, p. 70.

However, the barbarian, when roused to action,{15}is a very different being from the barbarianat rest. "The Turk," says Mr. Thornton, "isusually placid, hypochondriac, andunimpassioned; but, when the customary sedateness ofhis temper is ruffled, his passions ... are{20}furious and uncontrollable. The individual seemspossessed with all the ungovernable fury of amultitude; and all ties, all attachments, allnatural and moral obligations, are forgotten ordespised, till his rage subsides." A similar{25}remark is made by a writer of the day: "The Turkon horseback has no resemblance to the Turkreclining on his carpet. He there assumes avigor, and displays a dexterity, which fewEuropeans would be capable of emulating; no{30}horsemen surpass the Turks; and, with all theindolence of which they are accused, no peopleare more fond of the violent exercise of riding."

So was it with their ancestors, the Tartars;now dosing on their horses or their wagons, now{5}galloping over the plains from morning to night.However, these successive phases of Turkishcharacter, as reported by travelers, have seemedto readers as inconsistencies in their reports;Thornton accepts the inconsistency. "The{10}national character of the Turks," he says, "is acomposition of contradictory qualities. We findthem brave and pusillanimous; gentle andferocious; resolute and inconstant; active andindolent; fastidiously abstemious, and{15}indiscriminately indulgent. The great are alternatelyhaughty and humble, arrogant and cringing,liberal and sordid."[39]What is this but to say inone word that we find them barbarians?

[39]Bell's Geography.

According to these distinct moods or phases{20}of character, they will leave very variousimpressions of themselves on the minds of successivebeholders. A traveler finds them in theirordinary state in repose and serenity; he is surprisedand startled to find them so different from what{25}he imagined; he admires and extols them, andinveighs against the prejudice which hasslandered them to the European world. He finds themmild and patient, tender to the brute creation, asbecomes the, children of a Tartar shepherd, kind{30}and hospitable, self-possessed and dignified, thelowest classes sociable with each other, and thechildren gamesome. It is true; they are as nobleas the lion of the desert, and as gentle and asplayful as the fireside cat. Our traveler observes{5}all this;[40]and seems to forget that from thehumblest to the highest of the feline tribe, fromthe cat to the lion, the most wanton andtyrannical cruelty alternates with qualities moreengaging or more elevated. Other barbarous{10}tribes also have their innocent aspects—fromthe Scythians in the classical poets and historiansdown to the Lewchoo islanders in the pages ofBasil Hall.

[40]Vid. Sir Charles Fellows' Asia Minor.

But whatever be the natural excellences of{15}the Turks, progressive they are not. This SirCharles Fellows seems to allow: "My intimacywith the character of the Turks," he says, "whichhas led me to think so highly of their moralexcellence, has not given me the same favorable{20}impression of the development of their mentalpowers. Their refinement is of manners andaffections; there is little cultivation or activityof mind among them." This admission impliesa great deal, and brings us to a fresh{25}consideration. Observe, they were in the eighth centuryof their political existence when Thornton andVolney lived among them, and these authorsreport of them as follows: "Their buildings,"says Thornton, "are heavy in their proportions,{30}bad in detail, both in taste and execution,fantastic in decoration, and destitute of genius.Their cities are not decorated with publicmonuments, whose object is to enliven or to embellish."Their religion forbids them every sort of{5}painting, sculpture, or engraving; thus the fine artscannot exist among them. They have no musicbut vocal; and know of no accompanimentexcept a bass of one note like that of the bagpipe.Their singing is in a great measure recitative,{10}with little variation of note. They have scarcelyany notion of medicine or surgery; and they donot allow of anatomy. As to science, thetelescope, the microscope, the electric battery, areunknown, except as playthings. The compass{15}is not universally employed in their navy, norare its common purposes thoroughly understood.Navigation, astronomy, geography, chemistry,are either not known, or practiced only onantiquated and exploded principles. As to their{20}civil and criminal codes of law, these areunalterably fixed in the Koran....

Compare the Rome of Junius Brutus to theRome of Constantine, 800 years afterwards. Ineach of these polities there was a continuous{25}progression, and the end was unlike thebeginning; but the Turks, except that they have gainedthe faculty of political union, are pretty muchwhat they were when they crossed the Jaxartesand Oxus. Again, at the time of Togrul Beg, the{30}Greek schism also took place; now from MichaelCerularius, in 1054, to Anthimus, in 1853,Patriarchs of Constantinople, eight centuries havepassed of religious deadness and insensibility: alonger time has passed in China of a similarpolitical inertness: yet China has preserved at{5}least the civilization, and Greece the ecclesiasticalscience, with which they respectively passed intotheir long sleep; but the Turks of this day arestill in the less than infancy of art, literature,philosophy, and general knowledge; and we may{10}fairly conclude that, if they have not learnedthe very alphabet of science in eight hundredyears, they are not likely to set to work on it inthe nine hundredth.

It is true that in the last quarter of a century{15}efforts have been made by the government ofConstantinople to innovate on the existingcondition of its people; and it has addressed itselfin the first instance to certain details of dailyTurkish life. We must take it for granted that it{20}began with such changes as were easiest; if so, itsfailure in these small matters suggests how littleground there is for hope of success in otheradvances more important and difficult. Everyone knows that in the details of dress, carriage,{25}and general manners, the Turks are verydifferent from Europeans: so different, and soconsistently different, that the contrariety wouldseem to arise from some difference of essentialprinciple. "This dissimilitude," says Mr.Thornton, "which pervades the whole of their habits,is so general, even in things of apparentinsignificance, as almost to indicate design rather thanaccident...."{5}

To learn from others, you must entertain arespect for them; no one listens to those whomhe contemns. Christian nations make progressin secular matters, because they are aware theyhave many things to learn, and do not mind from{10}whom they learn them, so that he be able to teach.It is true that Christianity, as well asMahometanism, which imitated it, has its visible polity,and its universal rule, and its especialprerogatives and powers and lessons, for its disciples.{15}But, with a Divine wisdom, and contrary to itshuman copyist, it has carefully guarded (if Imay use the expression) against extending itsrevelations to any point which would blunt thekeenness of human research or the activity of{20}human toil. It has taken those matters for itsfield in which the human mind, left to itself,could not profitably exercise itself, or progress,if it would; it has confined its revelations to theprovince of theology, only indirectly touching{25}on other departments of knowledge, so far astheological truth accidentally affects them; andit has shown an equally remarkable care inpreventing the introduction of the spirit of casteor race into its constitution or administration.{30}Pure nationalism it abhors; its authoritativedocuments pointedly ignore the distinction ofJew and Gentile, and warn us that the first oftenbecomes the last; while its subsequent historyhas illustrated this great principle, by its awful,and absolute, and inscrutable, and irreversible{5}passage from country to country, as its territoryand its home. Such, then, it has been in theDivine counsels, and such, too, as realized in fact;but man has ways of his own, and, even beforeits introduction into the world, the inspired{10}announcements, which preceded it, were distortedby the people to whom they were given, tominister to views of a very different kind. Thesecularized Jews, relying on the supernaturalfavors locally and temporally bestowed on{15}themselves, fell into the error of supposing that aconquest of the earth was reserved for some mightywarrior of their own race, and that, incompensation of the reverses which befell them, theywere to become an imperial nation.{20}

What a contrast is presented to us by thesedifferent ideas of a universal empire! Thedistinctions of race are indelible; a Jew cannotbecome a Greek, or a Greek a Jew; birth is anevent of past time; according to the Judaizers,{25}their nation, as a nation, was ever to bedominant; and all other nations, as such, wereinferior and subject. What was the necessaryconsequence? There is nothing men more pridethemselves on than birth, for this very reason,{30}that it is irrevocable; it can neither be given tothose who have it not, nor taken away fromthose who have. The Almighty can do anythingwhich admits of doing; He can compensate everyevil; but a Greek poet says that there is onething impossible to Him—to undo what is{5}done. Without throwing the thought into ashape which borders on the profane, we may seein it the reason why the idea of national powerwas so dear and so dangerous to the Jew. It washis consciousness of inalienable superiority that{10}led him to regard Roman and Greek, Syrian andEgyptian, with ineffable arrogance and scorn.Christians, too, are accustomed to think of thosewho are not Christians as their inferiors; but theconviction which possesses them, that they have{15}what others have not, is obviously not open tothe temptation which nationalism presents.According to their own faith, there is no insuperablegulf between themselves and the rest of mankind;there is not a being in the whole world but is{20}invited by their religion to occupy the sameposition as themselves, and, did he come, wouldstand on their very level, as if he had ever beenthere. Such accessions to their body theycontinually receive, and they are bound under{25}obligation of duty to promote them. They nevercan pronounce of any one, now external to them,that he will not some day be among them; theynever can pronounce of themselves that, thoughthey are now within, they may not some day{30}be found outside, the Divine polity. Such arethe sentiments inculcated by Christianity, evenin the contemplation of the very superioritywhich it imparts; even there it is a principle, notof repulsion between man and man, but of goodfellowship; but as to subjects of secular{5}knowledge, since here it does not arrogate anysuperiority at all, it has in fact no tendency whateverto center its disciple's contemplation on himself,or to alienate him from his kind. He readilyacknowledges and defers to the superiority in{10}art or science of those, if so be, who areunhappily enemies to Christianity. He admits theprinciple of progress on all matters of knowledgeand conduct on which the Creator has not decidedthe truth already by revealing it; and he is at{15}all times ready to learn, in those merely secularmatters, from those who can teach him best.Thus it is that Christianity, even negatively, andwithout contemplating its positive influences, isthe religion of civilization.{20}

If I were asked to describe as briefly andpopularly as I could, what a University was, Ishould draw my answer from its ancientdesignation of aStudium Generale, or "School ofUniversal Learning." This description implies{5}the assemblage of strangers from all parts in onespot—from all parts; else, how will you findprofessors and students for every department ofknowledge? andin one spot; else, how can therebe any school at all? Accordingly, in its simple{10}and rudimental form, it is a school of knowledgeof every kind, consisting of teachers and learnersfrom every quarter. Many things are requisiteto complete and satisfy the idea embodied in thisdescription; but such as this a University seems{15}to be in its essence, a place for thecommunication and circulation of thought, by means ofpersonal intercourse, through a wide extent ofcountry.

Mutual education, in a large sense of the word,{20}is one of the great and incessant occupations ofhuman society, carried on partly with setpurpose, and partly not. One generation formsanother; and the existing generation is everacting and reacting upon itself in the persons of itsindividual members. Now, in this process, books,I need scarcely say, that is, thelitera scripta,are one special instrument. It is true; and{5}emphatically so in this age. Considering theprodigious powers of the press, and how they aredeveloped at this time in the never intermittingissue of periodicals, tracts, pamphlets, works inseries, and light literature, we must allow there{10}never was a time which promised fairer fordispensing with every other means of informationand instruction. What can we want more, youwill say, for the intellectual education of thewhole man, and for every man, than so exuberant{15}and diversified and persistent a promulgationof all kinds of knowledge? Why, you will ask,need we go up to knowledge, when knowledgecomes down to us? The Sibyl wrote herprophecies upon the leaves of the forest, and wasted{20}them; but here such careless profusion might beprudently indulged, for it can be affordedwithout loss, in consequence of the almost fabulousfecundity of the instrument which these latterages have invented. We have sermons in stones,{25}and books in the running brooks; works largerand more comprehensive than those which havegained for ancients an immortality, issue forthevery morning, and are projected onwards tothe ends of the earth at the rate of hundreds of{30}miles a day. Our seats are strewed, our pavementsare powdered, with swarms of little tracts;and the very bricks of our city walls preachwisdom, by informing us by their placards where wecan at once cheaply purchase it.

I allow all this, and much more; such{5}certainly is our popular education, and its effects areremarkable. Nevertheless, after all, even in thisage, whenever men are really serious aboutgetting what, in the language of trade, is called "agood article," when they aim at something{10}precise, something refined, something reallyluminous, something really large, something choice,they go to another market; they avail themselves,in some shape or other, of the rival method, theancient method, of oral instruction, of present{15}communication between man and man, of teachersinstead of learning, of the personal influence of amaster, and the humble initiation of a disciple,and, in consequence, of great centers ofpilgrimage and throng, which such a method of{20}education necessarily involves.

If the actions of men may be taken as any testof their convictions, then we have reason forsaying this, viz.: that the province and theinestimable benefit of thelitera scriptais that of{25}being a record of truth, and an authority of appeal,and an instrument of teaching in the hands of ateacher; but that, if we wish to become exact andfully furnished in any branch of knowledge whichis diversified and complicated, we must consult{30}the living man and listen to his living voice....No book can convey the special spirit anddelicate peculiarities of its subject with thatrapidity and certainty which attend on the sympathyof mind with mind, through the eyes, the look,the accent, and the manner, in casual expressions{5}thrown off at the moment, and the unstudiedturns of familiar conversation. But I am alreadydwelling too long on what is but an incidentalportion of my main subject. Whatever be thecause, the fact is undeniable. The general{10}principles of any study you may learn by books athome; but the detail, the color, the tone, theair, the life which makes it live in us, you mustcatch all these from those in whom it livesalready. You must imitate the student in French{15}or German, who is not content with hisgrammar, but goes to Paris or Dresden: you musttake example from the young artist, who aspiresto visit the great Masters in Florence and inRome. Till we have discovered some{20}intellectual daguerreotype, which takes off the course ofthought, and the form, lineaments, and featuresof truth, as completely and minutely, as theoptical instrument reproduces the sensibleobject, we must come to the teachers of wisdom{25}to learn wisdom, we must repair to the fountain,and drink there. Portions of it may go fromthence to the ends of the earth by means ofbooks; but the fullness is in one place alone. Itis in such assemblages and congregations of{30}intellect that books themselves, the masterpiecesof human genius, are written, or at leastoriginated.

The principle on which I have been insistingis so obvious, and instances in point are so ready,that I should think it tiresome to proceed with{5}the subject, except that one or two illustrationsmay serve to explain my own language about it,which may not have done justice to the doctrinewhich it has been intended to enforce.

For instance, the polished manners and{10}high-bred bearing which are so difficult of attainment,and so strictly personal when attained,—whichare so much admired in society, from societyare acquired. All that goes to constitute agentleman,—the carriage, gait, address, gestures,{15}voice; the ease, the self-possession, the courtesy,the power of conversing, the talent of notoffending; the lofty principle, the delicacy of thought,the happiness of expression, the taste andpropriety, the generosity and forbearance, the{20}candor and consideration, the openness ofhand—these qualities, some of them come by nature,some of them may be found in any rank, some ofthem are a direct precept of Christianity; butthe full assemblage of them, bound up in the{25}unity of an individual character, do we expectthey can be learned from books? are they notnecessarily acquired, where they are to be found,in high society? The very nature of the caseleads us to say so; you cannot fence without an{30}antagonist, nor challenge all comers in disputationbefore you have supported a thesis; and inlike manner, it stands to reason, you cannot learnto converse till you have the world to conversewith; you cannot unlearn your naturalbashfulness, or awkwardness, or stiffness, or other{5}besetting deformity, till you serve your time insome school of manners. Well, and is it not soin matter of fact? The metropolis, the court,the great houses of the land, are the centers towhich at stated times the country comes up, as to{10}shrines of refinement and good taste; and thenin due time the country goes back again home,enriched with a portion of the socialaccomplishments, which those very visits serve to call outand heighten in the gracious dispensers of them.{15}We are unable to conceive how the"gentleman-like" can otherwise be maintained; andmaintained in this way it is....

Religious teaching itself affords us anillustration of our subject to a certain point. It{20}does not indeed seat itself merely in centers ofthe world; this is impossible from the nature ofthe case. It is intended for the many not thefew; its subject-matter is truth necessary for us,not truth recondite and rare; but it concurs in{25}the principle of a University so far as this, thatits great instrument, or rather organ, has everbeen that which nature prescribes in all education,the personal presence of a teacher, or, intheological language, Oral Tradition. It is the living{30}voice, the breathing form, the expressive countenance,which preaches, which catechises. Truth,a subtle, invisible, manifold spirit, is poured intothe mind of the scholar by his eyes and ears,through his affections, imagination, and reason;it is poured into his mind and is sealed up there{5}in perpetuity, by propounding and repeating it,by questioning and requestioning, by correctingand explaining, by progressing and then recurringto first principles, by all those ways which areimplied in the word "catechising." In the first{10}ages, it was a work of long time; months,sometimes years, were devoted to the arduous taskof disabusing the mind of the incipient Christianof its pagan errors, and of molding it upon theChristian faith. The Scriptures indeed were at{15}hand for the study of those who could availthemselves of them; but St. Irenæus does nothesitate to speak of whole races, who had beenconverted to Christianity, without being able toread them. To be unable to read or write was in{20}those times no evidence of want of learning: thehermits of the deserts were, in this sense of theword, illiterate; yet the great St. Anthony,though he knew not letters, was a match indisputation for the learned philosophers who came{25}to try him. Didymus again, the greatAlexandrian theologian, was blind. The ancientdiscipline, called theDisciplina Arcani, involved thesame principle. The more sacred doctrines ofRevelation were not committed to books but{30}passed on by successive tradition. The teachingon the Blessed Trinity, and the Eucharistappears to have been so handed down for somehundred years; and when at length reduced towriting, it has filled many folios, yet has not beenexhausted.{5}

But I have said more than enough inillustration; end as I began—a University is a placeof concourse, whither students come from everyquarter for every kind of knowledge. Youcannot have the best of every kind everywhere; you{10}must go to some great city or emporium for it.There you have all the choicest productionsof nature and art all together, which you findeach in its own separate place elsewhere. Allthe riches of the land, and of the earth, are{15}carried up thither; there are the best markets, andthere the best workmen. It is the center oftrade, the supreme court of fashion, the umpireof rival talents, and the standard of things rareand precious. It is the place for seeing galleries{20}of first-rate pictures, and for hearing wonderfulvoices and performers of transcendent skill. Itis the place for great preachers, great orators,great nobles, great statesmen. In the nature ofthings, greatness and unity go together;{25}excellence implies a center. And such, for the thirdor fourth time, is a University; I hope I do notweary out the reader by repeating it. It is theplace to which a thousand schools makecontributions; in which the intellect may safely{30}range and speculate, sure to find its equal insome antagonist activity, and its judge in thetribunal of truth. It is a place where inquiryis pushed forward, and discoveries verified andperfected, and rashness rendered innocuous, anderror exposed, by the collision of mind with mind,{5}and knowledge with knowledge. It is the placewhere the professor becomes eloquent, and is amissionary and a preacher, displaying his sciencein its most complete and most winning form,pouring it forth with the zeal of enthusiasm, and{10}lighting up his own love of it in the breasts ofhis hearers. It is the place where the catechistmakes good his ground as he goes, treading in thetruth day by day into the ready memory, andwedging and tightening it into the expanding{15}reason. It is a place which wins the admirationof the young by its celebrity, kindles theaffections of the middle-aged by its beauty, and rivetsthe fidelity of the old by its associations. It is aseat of wisdom, a light of the world, a minister of{20}the faith, an Alma Mater of the rising generation.It is this and a great deal more, and demands asomewhat better head and hand than mine todescribe it well.

It has been my desire, were I able, to bring{25}before the reader what Athens may have been,viewed as what we have since called a University;and to do this, not with any purpose of writinga panegyric on a heathen city, or of denyingits many deformities, or of concealing what wasmorally base in what was intellectually great, butjust the contrary, of representing as they really{5}were; so far, that is, as to enable him to see whata University is, in the very constitution of societyand in its own idea, what is its nature and object,and what its needs of aid and support external toitself to complete that nature and to secure that{10}object.

So now let us fancy our Scythian, or Armenian,or African, or Italian, or Gallic student, aftertossing on the Saronic waves, which would be hismore ordinary course to Athens, at last casting{15}anchor at Piræus. He is of any condition or rankof life you please, and may be made to order,from a prince to a peasant. Perhaps he is someCleanthes, who has been a boxer in the publicgames. How did it ever cross his brain to betake{20}himself to Athens in search of wisdom? or, if hecame thither by accident, how did the love of itever touch his heart? But so it was, to Athens hecame with three drachms in his girdle, and he gothis livelihood by drawing water, carrying loads,{25}and the like servile occupations. He attachedhimself, of all philosophers, to Zeno theStoic,—to Zeno, the most high-minded, the most haughtyof speculators; and out of his daily earnings thepoor scholar brought his master the daily sum of{30}an obolus, in payment for attending his lectures.Such progress did he make, that on Zeno's deathhe actually was his successor in his school; and,if my memory does not play me false, he is theauthor of a hymn to the Supreme Being, which isone of the noblest effusions of the kind in classical{5}poetry. Yet, even when he was the head of aschool, he continued in his illiberal toil as if hehad been a monk; and, it is said, that once, whenthe wind took his pallium, and blew it aside, hewas discovered to have no other garment at{10}all—something like the German student who came upto Heidelberg with nothing upon him but a greatcoat and a pair of pistols.

Or it is another disciple of the Porch—Stoicby nature, earlier than by profession—who is{15}entering the city; but in what different fashionhe comes! It is no other than Marcus, Emperorof Rome and philosopher. Professors long sincewere summoned from Athens for his service, whenhe was a youth, and now he comes, after his{20}victories in the battlefield, to make hisacknowledgments at the end of life, to the city of wisdom, andto submit himself to an initiation into theEleusinian mysteries.

Or it is a young man of great promise as an{25}orator, were it not for his weakness of chest, whichrenders it necessary that he should acquire the artof speaking without over-exertion, and shouldadopt a delivery sufficient for the display of hisrhetorical talents on the one hand, yet merciful{30}to his physical resources on the other. He iscalled Cicero; he will stop but a short time, andwill pass over to Asia Minor and its cities, beforehe returns to continue a career which will renderhis name immortal; and he will like his shortsojourn at Athens so well, that he will take good{5}care to send his son thither at an earlier age thanhe visited it himself.

But see where comes from Alexandria (for weneed not be very solicitous about anachronisms),a young man from twenty to twenty-two, who{10}has narrowly escaped drowning on his voyage,and is to remain at Athens as many as eight orten years, yet in the course of that time will notlearn a line of Latin, thinking it enough tobecome accomplished in Greek composition, and in{15}that he will succeed. He is a grave person, anddifficult to make out; some say he is a Christian,something or other in the Christian line his fatheris for certain. His name is Gregory, he is bycountry a Cappadocian, and will in time become{20}preëminently a theologian, and one of theprincipal Doctors of the Greek Church.

Or it is one Horace, a youth of low stature andblack hair, whose father has given him aneducation at Rome above his rank in life, and now is{25}sending him to finish it at Athens; he is said tohave a turn for poetry: a hero he is not, and itwere well if he knew it; but he is caught by theenthusiasm of the hour, and goes off campaigningwith Brutus and Cassius, and will leave his shield{30}behind him on the field of Philippi.

Or it is a mere boy of fifteen: his nameEunapius; though the voyage was not long, seasickness, or confinement, or bad living on board thevessel, threw him into a fever, and, when thepassengers landed in the evening at Piræus, he{5}could not stand. His countrymen whoaccompanied him, took him up among them and carriedhim to the house of the great teacher of the day,Proæresius, who was a friend of the captain's,and whose fame it was which drew the{10}enthusiastic youth to Athens. His companionsunderstand the sort of place they are in, and, with thelicense of academic students, they break into thephilosopher's house, though he appears to haveretired for the night, and proceed to make{15}themselves free of it, with an absence of ceremony,which is only not impudence, because Proæresiustakes it so easily. Strange introduction for ourstranger to a seat of learning, but not out ofkeeping with Athens; for what could you expect of a{20}place where there was a mob of youths and noteven the pretense of control; where the poorerlived any how, and got on as they could, and theteachers themselves had no protection from thehumors and caprices of the students who filled{25}their lecture halls? However, as to thisEunapius, Proæresius took a fancy to the boy, and toldhim curious stories about Athenian life. Hehimself had come up to the University with oneHephæstion, and they were even worse off than{30}Cleanthes the Stoic; for they had only one cloakbetween them, and nothing whatever besides,except some old bedding; so when Proæresiuswent abroad, Hephæstion lay in bed, andpracticed himself in oratory; and then Hephæstionput on the cloak, and Proæresius crept under the{5}coverlet. At another time there was so fiercea feud between what would be called "town andgown" in an English University, that theProfessors did not dare lecture in public, for fear ofill treatment.{10}

But a freshman like Eunapius soon gotexperience for himself of the ways and mannersprevalent in Athens. Such a one as he had hardlyentered the city, when he was caught hold of bya party of the academic youth, who proceeded to{15}practice on his awkwardness and his ignorance.At first sight one wonders at their childishness;but the like conduct obtained in the mediævalUniversities; and not many months have passedaway since the journals have told us of sober{20}Englishmen, given to matter-of-fact calculations,and to the anxieties of money making, peltingeach other with snowballs on their own sacredterritory, and defying the magistracy, when theywould interfere with their privileges of{25}becoming boys. So I suppose we must attribute it tosomething or other in human nature. Meanwhile,there stands the newcomer, surrounded by a circleof his new associates, who forthwith proceed tofrighten, and to banter, and to make a fool of him,{30}to the extent of their wit. Some address him withmock politeness, others with fierceness; and sothey conduct him in solemn procession across theAgora to the Baths; and as they approach, theydance about him like madmen. But this was tobe the end of his trial, for the Bath was a sort of{5}initiation; he thereupon received the pallium, orUniversity gown, and was suffered by histormentors to depart in peace. One alone isrecorded as having been exempted from thispersecution; it was a youth graver and loftier than{10}even St. Gregory himself: but it was not from hisforce of character, but at the instance of Gregory,that he escaped. Gregory was his bosom friend,and was ready in Athens to shelter him whenhe came. It was another Saint and Doctor; the{15}great Basil, then, (it would appear,) as Gregory,but a catechumen of the Church.

But to return to our freshman. His troublesare not at an end, though he has got his gownupon him. Where is he to lodge? whom is he{20}to attend? He finds himself seized, before hewell knows where he is, by another party of menor three or four parties at once, like foreignporters at a landing, who seize on the baggage of theperplexed stranger, and thrust half a dozen cards{25}into his unwilling hands. Our youth is plied bythe hangers-on of professor this, or sophist that,each of whom wishes the fame or the profit ofhaving a houseful. We will say that he escapesfrom their hands,—but then he will have to{30}choose for himself where he will put up; and, totell the truth, with all the praise I have alreadygiven, and the praise I shall have to give, tothe city of mind, nevertheless, between ourselves,the brick and wood which formed it, the actualtenements, where flesh and blood had to lodge{5}(always excepting the mansions of great men ofthe place), do not seem to have been much betterthan those of Greek or Turkish towns, which areat this moment a topic of interest and ridiculein the public prints. A lively picture has lately{10}been set before us of Gallipoli. Take, says thewriter,[41]a multitude of the dilapidated outhousesfound in farm-yards in England, of the ricketyold wooden tenements, the cracked, shutterlessstructures of planks and tiles, the sheds and stalls,{15}which our bye lanes, or fish-markets, orriver-sides can supply; tumble them down on thedeclivity of a bare bald hill; let the spacesbetween house and house, thus accidentallydetermined, be understood to form streets, winding of{20}course for no reason, and with no meaning, up anddown the town; the roadway always narrow, thebreadth never uniform, the separate housesbulging or retiring below, as circumstances may havedetermined, and leaning forward till they meet{25}overhead—and you have a good idea ofGallipoli. I question whether this picture wouldnot nearly correspond to the special seat of theMuses in ancient times. Learned writers assureus distinctly that the houses of Athens were for{30}the most part small and mean; that the streetswere crooked and narrow; that the upper storiesprojected over the roadway; and that staircases,balustrades, and doors that opened outwardsobstructed it—a remarkable coincidence of{5}description. I do not doubt at all, thoughhistory is silent, that that roadway was jolting tocarriages, and all but impassable; and that itwas traversed by drains, as freely as any Turkishtown now. Athens seems in these respects to{10}have been below the average cities of its time."A stranger," says an ancient, "might doubt, onthe sudden view, if really he saw Athens."

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