The Prime Minister never displayed his astonishing intel- lectual and
physical vigour more remarkably than in the delivery of the first Romanes lecture last Monday at Oxford on the history of Universities, and especially of the two great English Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. We are somewhat surprised to observe that Mr. Gladstone attributed so much more importance to the influence of laymen in the origination of the two Universities than has usually been assigned to them. The present writer has no opinion, and no right to an opinion on the subject, but certainly many careful students hold that, for a couple of centuries at least, the Universities were purely ecclesiastical foundations. Mr. Gladstone, however, says :—"I hare only to observe that, according to the principle of the old English law, the Uni- versity as such is a lay and not an ecclesiastical foundation, and that this principle is a deep principle, and is also a just principle." But is it only a legal figment or an historical fact ? Were not our Universities at their foundation, and long after it, ecclesiastical corporations under ecclesiastical rule and government ?
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