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An Academic Sketch
35

so firmly and so scientifically, from a Christian point of departure, the foundations of the relation between the seen world and its unseen Ruler?

Surely this great man may be counted now, as Keats was counted when Shelley wrote the Adonais, among

Th' inheritors of unfulfilled renown.

So then, with others of the band of the Immortals, he abides his time. And I believe it will reckon as not the least among the glories of Oxford, if she can show, when called to account, that in the exercise of her teaching office she has done constant justice to her illustrious child, and to her own traditions, and to the exigencies of the future, in connection with him.

Let me now endeavour briefly to present the distinctive character of our two Universities to view with reference to one other particular. That particular is the different proportions in which they may have divided their energies between the production of men of thought on the one hand, or men of action on the other. For, there may be a difference in the comparative adaptation of their respective methods and institutions, and of their interior and essential genius, to the one or the other purpose.

It is not, I think, very difficult to point out, in the region of action as distinguished from the world of thought, the greatest ecclesiastics of the English Church since the Conquest. I suppose them to be Becket; Langton, who led the Barons in extorting Magna Charta from King John, and who acted no less stoutly against the great Pope Innocent III, his patron;