Come on then, my Lord: have the goodness to point out to us those happier seminaries, where these and all other virtues are more successfully propagated.
But which way will your Lordship direct us to take, in this search? Shall we turn to the North of this country for those advantages, which we despair of finding in the South? Or, because the grossness of our island air may infect all parts alike, shall we shape our course to the Continent? And does your Lordship encourage us to look for some Athens amidst the Protestant states of Germany, in the Netherlands, or the Swiss Cantons?
These, I take it, are the only scenes which your Lordship can have in view; for, as high as their reputation may be in this respect, you would hardly advise the breeding of our English youth in the colleges of the Jesuits.
One word then, if you please, on these Protestant Universities on the Continent.
Your Lordship and I have had some experience of the state of literature and education in those places. Eminent and excellent men they surely have amongst them. But so, your Lordship will confess, have the Universities of England. If we do not readily find those who, at this day, may be opposed to a Limborch or a Le Clerc; yet it is not long since we had to boast of a Chillingworth, a Cudworth, and a Whichcot; all, men of manly thought, generous minds, and incomparable learning.
But the question is not, you know, of particular men, which such great bodies rarely want; but, of the general frame and constitution of learned societies, fit for the purposes of polite and liberal education.
Shall we say then, that the scattered tribes of students in a Dutch or Swiss town are likely to be better instructed, or better governed, than the young scholars in our colleges; or, that the good order, discipline, and sobriety of these places, is to be compared with the anarchy and licence of those other?
Your Lordship, I know, takes a pleasure to conceive of certain foreign academies, as of that ANCIENT one, where the students visited, without constraint, the schools of philosophers, and even bore a part in their free conferences and disputations: you even love to paint the noble youth to yourself, as of old, spatiating, at their leisure, in shady walks and porticos, and imbibing the principles of science as they drop upon them in the dews of Attic eloquence and politeness.
All this, my Lord, is very well: yet, setting aside a certain colouring of expression which takes and amuses the imagination, I see but little to admire in this picture; certainly not enough to make one regret the want of the original, and seriously to prefer this easy manner of breeding, to that stricter form which prevails in our own Universities: where the day begins and ends with religious offices: where the diligence of the youth is quickened and relieved, in turn, by stated hours of study and recreation: where temperance and sobriety are even convivial virtues; and the two extremes of a festive jollity and unsocial gloom are happily tempered by the decencies of a common table; where, in a word, the discipline of Spartan Halls and the civility of Athenian Banquets are, or may be, united.
Surely, my Lord, these wholesome regulations, with many others that might be mentioned, could we but strip them of the opprobrious name of collegiate and monastic, are of another use and value in education, than the lax unrestrained indulgence of foreign seminaries.