I need not tell you that your late lord rector took this view of his position, and acted upon it with the comprehensive, far-seeing insight into the actual condition and tendencies, not merely of his own, but of other countries, which is his honorable characteristic among statesmen. I have already done my best, and, as long as I hold my office, I shall continue to endeavor, to follow in the path which he trod; to do what in me lies to bring this university nearer to the ideal—alas! that I should be obliged to say ideal—of all universities; which, as I conceive, should be places in which thought is free from all fetters; and in which all sources of knowledge, and all aids to learning, should be accessible to all comers, without distinction of creed or country, riches or poverty.
Do not suppose, however, that I am sanguine enough to expect much to come of any poor efforts of mine. If your annals take any notice of my incumbency, I shall probably go down to posterity as the rector who was always beaten. But if they add, as I think they will, that my defeats became victories in the hands of my successors, I shall be well content.
The scenes are shifting in the great theatre of the world. The act which commenced with the Protestant Reformation is nearly played out, and a wider and a deeper change than that effected three centuries ago—a reformation, or rather a revolution of thought, the extremes of which are represented by the intellectual heirs of John of Leyden, and of Ignatius Loyola, rather than by those of Luther and of Leo—is waiting to come on, nay, visible behind the scenes to those who have good eyes. Men are beginning, once more, to awake to the fact that matters of belief and of speculation are of absolutely infinite practical importance, and are drawing off from that sunny country "where it is always afternoon"—the sleepy hollow of broad indifferentism—to range themselves under their natural banners. Change is in the air. It is whirling feather-heads into all sorts of eccentric orbits, and filling the steadiest with a sense of insecurity. It insists on reopening all questions and asking all institutions, however venerable, by what right they exist, and whether they are, or are not, in harmony with the real or supposed wants of mankind. And it is remarkable that these searching inquiries are not so much forced on institutions from without, as developed from within. Consummate scholars question the value of learning; priests contemn dogma; and women turn their back upon man's ideal of perfect womanhood, and seek satisfaction in apocalyptic visions of some, as yet unrealized, epicene reality.
If there be a type of stability in this world, one would be inclined to look for it in the old universities of England. But it has been my business, of late, to hear a good deal about what is going on in these famous corporations; and I have been filled with astonishment
